Quiet down, quiet down, please.

Good morning, and welcome to today's New York City Council hearing, executive budget hearing from the Committees on Finance jointly with the committees on higher education and the Committee on Education.

At this point, I'd like to remind everyone to please silence our electronic devices.

And at no point is anyone to approach the dais.

Chairs, we're ready to begin.

Okay.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the ninth day of the FY27 executive budget hearings.

I'm Councilmember Linda Lee.

And today's hearing will begin with City University of New York, followed by Department of Education.

And I'm very pleased to be joined by my colleague and chair of the Committee on Higher Education, Councilmember Rita Joseph.

And we have been joined by Council Members Wong, Lewis, Morano, and Marte.

And welcome, Chancellor, Felix Metros Rodriguez and your team.

Thank you all for joining us today to answer our questions.

On May 12, 2026, the admin released the executive financial plan for FY26 to 2030 with a proposed FY27 budget of 124.7 billion.

The City University of New York's proposed FY27 budget of 1.57 billion represents 1.3% of the administration's proposed budget in the executive plan.

And this is an increase of 21.1 million dollars or 1.4% from the 1.55 billion originally budgeted in the FY27 preliminary plan.

And this increase is mainly the result of $15 million in city funding for operating support that was restored and baselined starting in FY27.

As of April 2026, CUNY's pedagogical headcount was the same as their fiscal 26 budgeted headcount, and their non-pedagogical headcount was four positions fewer than their FY26 budgeted headcount.

In the council's preliminary budget response, we called on the mayor to add and baseline a total of 22.5 million to CUNY's budget to invest in essential programs that ensure student retention, such as CUNY ACE, CUNY ASAP, and CUNY Reconnect are that they remain in place.

While we so often look at recruitment to CUNY colleges programs that encourage people to return and to stay at a higher education, returning to stay in higher education must be fund fully funded and baselined.

We were disappointed to see that these programs were not included in the plan.

And while we are happy to see the administration baseline operating support for CUNY, we urge the administration to go further.

CUNY is New York's gateway to affordable higher education, but this opportunity is only as strong as the supports that allow students to reach the finish line.

The evidence-based programs at stake have demonstrated clear, measurable impact on retention and graduation rates, and students are counting on them.

I look forward to hearing more from the Chancellor today about where that funding stands and what is needed to protect it.

And at this time, I want to now turn it over to my co-chair for this hearing, Chair Councilmember Joseph, for her opening statement.

Thank you, Chair Lee.

Good morning, everyone.

I'm Councilmember Rita Joseph, Chair of the Committee on Higher Education.

Welcome to today's hearing on City's fiscal 2027 executive budget for the City University of New York.

CUNY fiscal 2027 executive budget totals 1.57 billion, including 1.12 billion in personal service to support 4,289 pedagogical position and 1,735 non-pedagogical positions.

The university's budget includes 455 million in other personnel service spending in this executive plan.

One-time spent saving of 21.5 million was added in the fiscal 2027 from spending reductions on supplies and other materials at community colleges, of which CUNY is still determining exactly how to allocate these savings across community colleges.

Although the executive plan also includes baseline funding, 15 million to support academic advisement, mental health and wellness, career readiness and workforce preparation program.

It is disappointing that the plan did not restore any of the essential programs like CUNY Reconnect, ACE, and ASAP.

There is no doubt that these programs have proven to be effective in bringing individuals back to pursue degrees as well as providing financial and academic support to unlock higher education.

It is unacceptable that we have to fight every year for the administration to restore funding for these programs.

We are eager to hear why CUNY Reconnect, ACE, and ASAP are not funded beyond fiscal 2026, and whether CUNY has included them in their fiscal 2027 budget priorities to OMB.

As we're moving closer to adopting the fiscal 2027 budget, we must remember that many students continue to face barriers such as food and housing insecurities, childcare needs and the cost of transportation.

I said it at our preliminary budget hearing and I will emphasize it again we must invest in programs that clear pathways to increase graduation rates.

We must also find disparities that exist in programs between campuses and work to address them.

The executive capital commitment plan includes an additional 50 million in fiscal 2027 to help bring CUNY community colleges back in a state of good repair.

We are interested to learn about the university's plan to address critical capital repairs at community colleges.

It is well recorded that many CUNY buildings are in desperate need of maintenance and repair for leaking roofs non-working elevators it is my hope that CUNY prioritize capital projects to ensure equity as there are so many needed repairs across the CUNY system.

Lastly it was brought to my attention that CUNY needs to improve its internal process to respond in a timely manner to the committee's budget related follow-up questions I should say that is it unacceptable that staff has to wait over three weeks to receive CUNY's answers on budget inquiries information is key in keeping this committee informed and this timeline to respond to follow up questions must improve as we do want to remain good partners.

Before I begin I'd like to thank the finance staff Ali Stofer, Florentine Cabaret, and Caitlin O'Hagan for preparing this hearing as well as committee staff Julia Goldsmith Pinkham and Regina Paul for their support.

Finally I'd like to thank my staff including Giovanni's chief of staff Giovanni Piquant and my legislative and budget director Benjamin Atkinson's I will now turn it back over to Chair Lee.

Thank you Chair Joseph just before we begin uh another reminder as I've been saying this at all the hearings that we are going to have all of our public testimonies on one day um June 10th Wednesday this coming Wednesday starting at 9 30 so if you know folks that would like to testify for the public hearing portion please make sure that they sign up and we look forward to hearing from the public on their feedback.

So again June 10th Wednesday 9 30 a.m.

And with that I will turn it over to Brian Sarfo or committee council to swear in the witnesses good morning.

Do you affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth before this committee and to respond honestly to Councilmember questions Chancellor Matos Rodriguez.

Vice Chancellor Alberto Vice Chancellor Batista and Vice Chancellor Gardner you may begin okay thank you.

Good morning Chair Lee and Chair Joseph and the members of the City Council Committees on Finance and Higher Education and Felix Matos Rodriguez, the Chancellor of the City University of New York and I'm joined by the CUNY Dream Team of University Pro Batista and CFO Gardner.

I want to thank the City Council for your stepfast commitment to CUNY your investment sustained what has long defined this university broad access to affordable high quality education for one of the most diverse student bodies in the nation and a pathway to social and economic mobility for generations of New Yorkers your support has been essential to delivering strong returns for the more than 4000 degree seeking and continual education students we serve allowing 72% of CUNY students to attend tuition free and 77% to graduate without debt I just want to give you a warning that I'm going to be reading a shorter version of the submitted testimony that you have a copy of and I assume that you'll be happy about that.

Our affordable tuition and diverse offerings and support systems have helped fuel enrollment gains.

This fall, enrollment grew nearly 4% over last fall, the third consecutive year of growth.

Since the fall of 2022, enrollment has jumped 9%, nearly 21,000 additional students.

This increase is the most is most evident in our community colleges.

Enrollment at CUNY's seven community colleges has rebounded from the pandemic, with an additional 9,500 students welcome over the last three years, and 18% increase.

Notably, during the same period, part-time enrollment surged 37% at our community colleges.

This growth is driven by the expansion of the state's TAP and by the Reconnect Initiative launched to bring adult learners back to college.

Community colleges have also seen the highest retention rate increase, 7% since we have begun tracking this in 1990.

This growth has also been fueled by our ongoing efforts to actively recruit the next generation of CUNY students from the New York City Public Schools.

For the past three years, we have sent personalized letters to all graduating seniors and more recently to the caregivers offering admission and waiving application fees.

Once students earn their degree, we are committed to making sure it opens doors to a career.

Last fall, we launched CUNY Beyond, an ambitious plan that invests career readiness into every aspect of the undergraduate experience and smooth the transition from classroom to the workplace.

The program aims to triple the number of students in paid internships and increase employer recruitment by 20%, ultimately driving a projected $3.3 billion in future wage growth that translates into increased tax revenue and greater economic mobility.

We started CUNY Beyond with four campuses, with 6.8 million in state support in next year's budget.

We are expanding it to five more this summer.

We are looking to the council for support for two more community colleges in the next phase.

This efforts built on one of CUNY's redefining roles, serving as New York's primary talent engine for many of the essential sectors that keep the city running.

We prepare more than one-third of all new New York City public school teachers each year, and more than 40% of the students of color in New York State.

I am proud that city teachers from CUNY have a 17% higher five-year retention rate than those from other institutions.

This CUNY teacher pipeline is essential to addressing the statewide teacher shortage, and this year, for example, we triple the number of CUNY students in the Teaching Fellows Program.

More than 15,000 students have participated in the program since its inception, including the current schools chancellor, Kamar Samuels.

A critical priority for Governor Holko, Mayor Mandani, Speaker Menon, and this council is the shared goals of universal child care.

CUNY is uniquely positioned to meet the moment.

The university already enrolls more than 3,600 early childhood education students across 50 academic programs, making us the primary engine for training the educators needed to take this effort to make this effort successful.

We're expanding that pipeline through the statewide New York Early Childhood Professional Development Institute, and we're also launching new programs in early childhood leadership and administration, addressing a critical shortage in the field.

Turning to another vital area, CUNY's research enterprise does not simply advance knowledge.

It has a real impact on the quality of life for millions of New Yorkers.

For example, faculty researchers at City College, working with Memorial Sloan Kettering have developed a groundbreaking AI model that can detect breast cancer earlier and more accurately.

And projects like the New York City Urban Heat Portal at Hunter College and our partnership with the city and NYU on the FloodNet Real-Time Flood Monitoring Program are helping address climate emergencies.

At a time of increasing polarization and division, CUNY is helping members of our community develop the skills to engage across differences with empathy and respect.

Through our trailblazing collaboration with the Constructive Dialogue Institute, largely funded by this City Council, we are building a culture of constructive engagement.

This ambitious partnership represents the largest deployment of the CDI's model and the first initiative of its kind at a university system.

Complementing this work is our Center for Inclusivity and Equal Opportunity, which ensures that reports of discrimination and harassment are addressed promptly and fairly, and that all members of our community have access to the support that they need.

That commitment to safety, dignity, and inclusion extends beyond our campuses and into the communities that CUNY serves.

At a time of heightening uncertainty for immigrant communities, the council's support for CUNY citizenship now is more important than ever so that we can continue serving the thousands of New Yorkers who depend on us.

Our proven models of student success continue to set national standards.

The ASAP program more than doubles three-year completion rates for associate degree students, while ACE participants have achieved four-year graduation rates 12.4 higher than non-participant peers.

We're also leveraging technology to improve accessibility.

CUNY Accommodate has streamlined disability services, leading to a 25% increase in enrollment for these services, now reaching a record 13,800 students.

The CUNY CARES models in the Bronx in its first two years has helped over 1,000 Bronx students enroll in SNAP, collectively bringing an estimated $2.96 million into their household budgets to combat food insecurity.

This work is complemented by CUNY's system-wide network of campus food pantries, supported in part by the City Council's food insecurity program.

Over the past year, CUNY brought 42 capital projects to total completion.

We have also spent a total of 555 million towards both completed and ongoing projects, representing meaningful progress in the ongoing effort to modernize and preserve critical infrastructure across the university.

In my submitted testimony, you will find a list of notable projects brought to completion this year.

I will now turn to the mayor's executive budget for fiscal year 2027.

Let me begin by thanking Mary Mandani for fully funding the cost of the PSC CUNY labor contract and completing the funding for health insurance in the preliminary budget.

Additionally, I'd like to thank the mayor for providing baseline funding for the $50 million originally included in last year's executive budget.

On the capital side, we're thankful for the 50.8 million to our needed state of good repair work, in addition to the 7.1 million from the borough presidents.

We ask that you support the inclusion of the priorities listed in the submitted testimony and in our green sheet.

On the capital side, community colleges continue to face significant infrastructure challenges that directly impact student learning, environment, operational continuity, and sustainability.

The fiscal year 2627 capital requests reflected the urgency of these needs and the necessity of sustained investments in aging facilities across the system.

The 1.7 billion requests in the 26-27 capital plan included approximately $384 million for community colleges to support critical asset preservation initiatives and strategic growth and modernization projects.

These investments are essential to maintaining facilities capable of meeting the evolving needs of students, faculty, and workforce programs.

We ask for your support with the remaining amount from our 100 million asked for capital funds for community colleges.

To conclude, CUNY's success is New York City's success.

We have seen the impact that targeted investments has on enrollment, student success, and career readiness.

With your continued support, CUNY will remain the nation's greatest engine of social mobility and a national model for public higher education.

Thank you for the chance to testify, and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you so much and definitely appreciate the abbreviated uh testimony.

So I love it, and we have it all here, which is good too.

Um we've been joined by Council Member Brewer and Epstein as well as Ariola on Zoom.

Um so really quickly, um, I'm gonna try to go through these so I can pass it on to the chair and our members.

Um, uh for the FY27 executive budget, um, there's a restoration and baselining, as we mentioned, of 15 million starting in FY27.

Uh, the funding is a restoration from FY26.

How was the funding used in FY26 and what was the college campus allocation breakdown if you have that?

And will the funding be split between campuses in the same way for FY27?

So let me refer to uh to our CFO here for for the answer.

Sure.

Thank you for that question.

Um the uh the money that with the 15 million dollars was spread out uh among the community colleges.

You want me to read out the numbers to you?

If you can, yes.

No, no problem.

Uh uh BMCC uh 4.6 million, Bronx Community College, 1.4, Gutman, uh about 270,000, Hostos, uh a million, Kingsboro 2.5, LaGuardia, 3 million, and Queensborough 2 million.

Perfect.

Okay, I'm rounding those numbers.

I'm sorry?

I'm rounding those numbers.

Oh, okay, got it.

Perfect, thank you.

And then is this funding and the baseline?

Um, how it how will it allow you to actually expand, maybe perhaps on other programs and free up that funding?

Well, I mean, one of the main things is, and this is a recurring theme you'll hear from us throughout the hearing.

Baselining allows predictability and to make investments, particularly on the personnel side that are not just one year off, right?

So for many, so for many for many programs, and we'll be talking about this as you talked about reconnect and ASAP and all those programs, our capacity to bring in individuals are going to be able to be there for the long term allows us to plan better and to be more effective in the services.

Also, if we need to procure contracts, uh, you know, you cannot do that just with money that's going to be there for one year.

Uh so they'd be extremely helpful uh to us as we move forward.

Right.

So more planning purposes, which hopefully will help you plan better, and then also figure out staffing all of the other operational needs.

Okay, FY27 executive budget also includes 3.4 million only in intra-city funding as a new need for the city governance program uh with the campaign finance board, and the program will support fellows gaining work experience in civic engagement, which is great.

Um, how many fellows will be selected and what will be the selection process for that?

Who has the numbers for that?

Ken or so we need to get back to you on that.

I mean, the great thing about that program too is that it's consistent with our approach to give students a lot more uh paid and earn opportunities, right?

It's money in their pockets, and they're also advancing the education while serving the city, but we can get you the numbers.

Okay, and for the host organizations, do you know approximately how many you're gonna be partnering with and if you're gonna also anticipate extra funding in the out years for this program?

Again, if the more funding we have, the more students that we can include, and the more that we can partner with uh with other groups.

I can get you a list of the organizations to be precise.

Okay, and I don't know if you break it down this way, but if you could sort of give us an average of like how much the cost would be per student, because you know, and let us know what your I guess how much you would want to expand it to, which would also include the budget.

Okay, perfect.

Um, there's also a 25 million reduction in FY26 only for tuition adjustment related to student enrollment.

Um, what was uh CUNY's projected student enrollment versus the actual for FY25, which I know is going back a little bit, and FY26?

Can you have those?

And then also just whether you anticipate an increase or decrease in FY27.

So the 26 enrollment on FTE basis is at the senior colleges 128,000 at the junior colleges at the community colleges, pardon me, uh 51,000 for a total of 179.

Um that's uh about 4,000 in total above the uh 4400 above the uh the FY25 level.

That's on the FTE basis on uh on a total basis, those numbers are uh 26, 164 at the senior colleges, 75 of the community colleges for a total of 239, which is 1700 higher than uh the enrollment in 25.

Okay, great.

So the trends are increasing, which is good to see.

The number the enrollment trend is ticking upward.

Yes, that's good.

Amen.

Yeah.

Um are there any particular CUNY schools that are how in comparison struggling more than others in terms of recruitment enrollment?

Um, and are there resources that are needed for those schools?

So thank you for that question.

So I mean, I'm going from last year, we're still looking at at how the the full 26 is going to shape.

Uh, but the main enrollment growth was driven by the community colleges, right?

Uh, which is good for us because a lot of those are gonna end up end up transferring to the four-year schools, right?

So that is a good trend now, it's gonna be a good trend uh moving forward.

Um memory, I think last fall, um, all the schools experience enrollment growth, maybe with the exception of Queen's College, uh, and I know that they put together a strategy uh to advance enrollment.

We've also from the central office have been working with some of the schools that have enrollment challenges and tighter fiscal scenarios to support them with investments because clearly enrollment is the main driver of fiscal health uh for all the campuses, right?

Okay, perfect.

Um, and FY27 executive budget includes a one-time reduction of 21.5 million uh for a revenue reestimate.

Was this part of the exercise that you went through as part of the chief savings officer exercise?

Was that and how is the amount determined if that was the case?

For reduction questions, we go to Ken.

Okay.

That that we were asked to identify.

Um it's uh the way that uh CUNY is uh savings is structured, all of those savings take place in 27.

Is there, I'm sorry, was there more to your question?

Oh, just how it was determined uh how the reductions were determined and and how like what you use, which if you could give us categories of where those reductions are.

Um we are working through the details on how this will play out, but the additional uh state resources that we expect to receive, uh this this uh reduction was very purposely designed so that we would not impact the campuses.

Okay, I mean that yes, that is the main goal that we definitely wanted to push on the council side was that no cuts or services just to make sure, and I know some of them probably came from vacancies, but um uh were there any proposals that you submitted to OMB for the savings plan that were rejected or not accepted?

No.

Okay.

Um okay, really moving to ACE and ASAP.

Um so CUNY, the ASAPS program and uh the ACE program uh is great, and I'm glad you included more details in the testimony.

Um, how many students are currently enrolled in CUNY A7 ACE, and what is the retention rate?

Let's say I'm gonna let our provost answer that.

So uh the finalized numbers for academic year 24 25 is worth 39,299 uh students, and the uh one year retention rate was 65.6 percent.

65.6%, correct.

Okay.

And how does the retention rate differ for students not enrolled in CUNY ASAP race?

Um that's about uh twice as high um compared to non-ASAP students.

Oh wow, okay.

And graduation rate versus uh similar students not enrolled, um the two-year graduation rate is sixteen point five percent, and the three-year graduation rate, which is uh the main metric is thirty-four point six percent.

Thirty-four point six percent.

Okay, and I know that this hasn't been baselined yet, which obviously, as we mentioned, impacts the ability to sort of plan and for a new cohort of students, and so um when do you usually recruit for that program um to enroll in terms of CUNYAs?

Um we are usually recruiting right at the very uh point of admission, um, so students apply in the fall um and get uh decisions throughout the spring semester, and as they are receiving admissions letters, that's when the recruitment starts.

Okay, and to your point here, the recurrent funds is not just the obvious personnel.

You're making a commitment to bring students in for two, three years, right?

Uh so we need to make sure that we have the funding to be able to support them at that point when they come in too.

That's another reason why the baselining uh on this case and also on ACE is so important.

Yeah, no, definitely, okay.

Um, yes, planning purposes-wise for sure.

Um for CUNY Beyond, um what's the what is the current funding level for CUNY Beyond in FY26 and 27, and what are the funding sources for the program?

Let's see.

Um I can just jump in uh the the budget level for uh CUNY Beyond is about 2.2 in 26 and about 12.5 in 27.

Okay, 12.5 in FY27.

And and that is just uh a combination, I mean, of uh state and city funding.

We also similarly to the strategy that we have with ASAP, if you remember the the history of ASAP, we use a lot of philanthropic dollars to establish the model, establish the success of the model, and then make the case to you and to the state that it was a worthy investment.

So we're doing similarly, we're aggressively recruiting uh funds philanthropically to be able to support that work, particularly some of the work that we do at the central office, hoping that we can prove that this is the right thing to do for our students and then hopefully make that case.

So we're sort of following a similar strategy of how ASAP was supported, structured, and validated.

And how many um, because I know that you said there was an extra six point eight million in FY27 um for CUNY Beyond, which would allow you to expand to five schools.

So um can you list which schools um are included in CUNY Beyond?

So the the first four were uh Lehman, BMCC, uh Hunter, and LaGuardia.

We are expanding to uh City College and um I think uh Queensboro, Kingsboro, and uh York and those other ones and and Baroque.

Yeah, and yeah.

So the new ones are City, Baruch, um, York, uh, QCC and QCC.

Queensborough and Kingsboro.

Okay, perfect.

And we would love additional support uh to be able to bring in two more community colleges from uh from the council.

That would be great.

We gotta look at that.

Okay.

And um how many students does the program currently impact?

And then I guess with the additional five, what does it expand to?

So um at well, I mean, we have the numbers for BMCC is 15,126.

At Hontor, 12,194, at La Guardia, 8, uh 936, Lehman, 7, uh 990, and the projections for uh Baruch is 4,090.

For CCNY, 3,259, for Queensboro, 1,969, and Queensborough 2,270.

Oh, sorry, Kingsboro, Kingsboro is 1,969, and Queensborough, 2,270.

Thank you.

Okay.

And then York is in the next page.

Perfect.

Okay, great.

Um, okay, perfect.

And then just lastly, head count and vacancies.

Um the vacancy rate as of April is 0.7% for pedagogical positions and 16.4% for non-pedagogical positions.

Which colleges are facing the highest vacancy rates?

Do that or yeah.

Here's a medical data.

Okay.

And just while you're looking for that, if you could let us know how the changes in student enrollment have impacted the head count as well.

That'd be the head count of um, how the changes or faculty positions and uh right, the vacancy rate, yeah.

Yeah.

And the positions, yep.

I mean, the most immediate impact tends to be initially uh the employment of either full-time faculty or adjuncts, right?

Depending on the growth of opening more sections, and and that would be the the most immediate case of that.

We're gonna have to get you then, trying to find it.

Okay.

Yes, if you could let us know um which colleges are facing the highest vacancy rates, and then also just in terms of the current vacancies and how they're impacting, or if at all, if if they're impacting course offerings for the students, that would be great if you could let us know as well.

Okay.

Uh we've also been joined by council members Wilson and Jay Sanchez, and with that, I'm going to pass it off to Chair Joseph.

Thank you, Chair Lee.

Good to see you, Chancellor.

Same year.

Um, in your testimony, you mentioned that enrollment grew nearly 4% over the last fall, mostly in community colleges, basically post-COVID enrollment jumped up to 9%.

Can you further explain the tuition adjustment of the reduced $25 million if enrollment is increasing?

You want to take that?

Um, because that's uh those are the projections the city makes, right, based on enrollment.

Yeah, so you want to go?

No, uh, it's fine, yeah.

I mean, this is just to to match the actuals to the uh to the budget levels, right?

So we have to adjust the budget for the uh for the actual expenditure on that category.

Okay, thank you.

The fiscal 2026 to 2023 capital commencement commitment plan include 50 million in fiscal 2027, only to bring community college to the state of good repair.

The 50 million would be matched by the state for a total of 100 million.

We spoke at the preliminary budget hearing about how CUNY assessed the campuses that need immediate repairs.

Now that the funding has been allocated, will you be performing any additional assessments?

And what colleges will be allocated funding for repairs in April.

CUNY students and staff rally for the needs for repair, citing issues such as broken elevators, mold, flooding, among others.

How will CUNY ensure these problems are addressed quickly?

You want to take that back to thank you for the question.

Let me first start out by saying obviously we're very happy with uh 50 million dollars.

Uh matches to 100.

As you recall, we asked for a hundred million.

Uh as the chancellor alluded in his testimony, you know, that our community college is struggling from uh from the issue of uh defer maintenance and the state of good repair.

Uh as I stated at our hearing, there are multiple ways the way we look at uh how to prioritize.

First, the campus size and physical infrastructure, the age and condition of the facilities, uh the state of good repair and defer maintenance, and then campus needs and strategic priorities and uh in all of that it is really grounded around a couple of areas number one is grounded around the fact that we have done uh what we call a facility assessment of our facilities and we know exactly what what uh systems are gonna come offline at a certain time you know six months or a year and based on those knowing those things then we allocate resources to make sure that we don't have any problems uh in the winter months by you know a system going offline because it's not we didn't repair it at the time that we needed to do that furthermore what we also try to do is really try to really focus on um on tackling um what we call uh bathrooms and and a whole approach of just dealing with bathrooms and making sure that we have or dealing with trying to pack everything together so we could get the the whole issue of economy of scale and trying to do a lot more with with less and then lastly I think it's really really focus on which other vital systems that we know need uh most immediate attention and those are the ones that we prioritize and then we try to distribute those funds across all the schools so every school at least gets something but some schools get more than others based on the the age of their infrastructure when you do do that assessment would you be able to share with the committee what that's what that looks like and what's the timeline um I know that for example city tech their library ceiling fell is that one of your priorities um it was on the news um so when you do decide on and assess those needs and how you plan on addressing those issues would you share with the committee what your timeline is and what community what schools did you prioritize and put first sure I'm not sure what was on the news was actually what actually happened but let let's let's um too bad I can't play the clip for you but well yeah no I understand that um but um not everything we hear in the news is actually factual but the fact is that we um we will definitely be able to provide you that information so the news is lying on CUNY excuse me is the news lying on you it has it hasn't been the first time oh we've also heard that many students um about the needs for elevator repairs at CUNY's campuses elevators are essential for accessibility as it's updating the adaptive technology how does CUNY ensure accessibility as campuses especially in older buildings if a building cannot make made accessible due to historic landmark status what steps do CUNY take to ensure students can require accessibility modification and you know take full advantage of coming to your university because of mobility issues.

Well first of all we prioritize uh all that has to do with uh accessibility and compliance right is one of the criteria that the CEO Batista mentioned in the uh in in his comment so that's one of the things that we we prioritize in uh in determining what critical maintenance might be might be required and uh and then the second part I think we work with the campuses particularly in the ones that might be older right in which um it might be unfeasible to do that and then they work with the campuses to make sure that the classes that are taught for students that might require that might not need to be part of that building if you have staff that need those things I mean in in in our vision of the world we'd love to have all the buildings to be fully accessible but I think the campuses work very hard to make sure that if we do have some that are not that clear nobody's missing out because of that and then the scheduling of classes and the scheduling offices you know and I can tell you having been president of two campuses is one of the things that you figure out while you work on the things where you can actually change the conditions and build the rams and do the changes are needed.

Thank you for that um how do CUNY leverage adaptive technology to ensure um accessibility as well well I I'm gonna turn it over to to our provost.

One of the big uh items that you'll see in our green sheet is additional support uh for all the work that we're doing with students with disabilities.

So go to the heart of that question.

But I'll already talk about uh CUNY accommodation and some of the things that we've been doing.

Thank you for the question.

Um we leverage and are exploring and are actually having quite a lot of fun with the adaptive technologies.

Um the new technologies are pretty sophisticated now.

Um we have each of the campuses.

There are glasses that have an interpreter for those who are hard of hearing and we're exploring um virtual reality and VR headsets, but we have uh we constantly meet the needs of every single student through accommodate, as we've mentioned before.

Um we have been able to expedite from the moment of request to accommodation granted.

Uh our goal was two weeks, and it is we met the goal and exceed that within two weeks.

Um we because we have access to some of uh adaptive technology, we are able to provide that for students, and if we don't, we immediately meet the needs and find uh resources that are available.

So the wait is two weeks in and and you can borrow among the university system across in case you don't have it.

Okay, New York City Public School develop a building accessibility rating system to determine how accessible a building is and where they could improve.

Does CUNY have a similar model to determine accessibility needs?

I don't think we do.

You don't?

So love to learn more.

But you would eventually probably develop one?

I mean, we'd love to look at the model of the DO if it makes sense for us.

Yeah, absolutely.

It includes an assessment and how do you plan it?

It's it's really good.

Let's talk about our favorite topic, early childhood education.

That's everybody's favorite topic.

CUNY is requesting an additional six point million dollars to fund early childhood education program, including the apprenticeship program, the pro the child development associate, the CDA program, the CDA completion project and B2 um teacher certification support.

CUNY is requesting three million over three years to expand the early childhood apprenticeships program to recruit 200 new professionals.

What is the current budget of the program for fiscal 2026 and 2027?

And how many apprentices do you have currently enrolled?

The FIS, which program?

The apprenticeship, the apprenticeship program for your CDA.

This is I know we have this number.

So the I mean, the cost for year one is a million uh in in what we have projected.

So uh I assume that we're using that criteria uh to the numbers that we have now.

And how many um apprentices are currently enrolled in your program?

30.

And um how do um apprentice apply and what type of outreach does CUNY perform for this program?

Well, so we we use a number of things.

Uh first we have the statewide network, uh, which is you know sort of the cadillac of working with all the individuals that are working in in early childhood.

That's a key uh method for us to be able to recruit.

Uh we use our own network of the students on the campuses.

I think I mentioned the testimony we have about 3,600 uh undergrad students studying that.

We have great relationship also with a lot of the nonprofits and some of the providers uh that work with us, and you know, we have also our 17 child care centers uh that are hubs of talented people spreading the word too.

So um plenty of ways to get in good people in.

That's wonderful.

How long is the apprenticeship?

How long is the program?

I need to get back on that.

Um, and while the students are in your program, um, what type of support?

That was 30 students.

How many?

That I know.

I did I don't know.

I need to get back to you on the duration of the program.

Okay, okay.

Um, and what support do you provide once the student is enrolled in that program?

Well, one of the great things that the program gets to do is that they are immediately paired with with our provider, right?

So you're building up uh first networks for the students in terms of employability, getting a sense of what that experience in the workplace is and uh and then, you know, I think that we are becoming the go-to as all the scaling up happens for people to come seeking seeking talent.

So, and uh we provide specific pre-service job training and we assist with job matches as well.

The program was launched launched in 2025.

How is CUNY um assessing the success of the program?

And can you share any preliminary outcomes?

So I I don't have an answer for that.

Uh and I think the best that the best thing to know is is that there is wide demand uh for for the program, and that what I'll get back to you.

So one year program, so I'll have to sort of find out more about the evaluation component of it.

Absolutely, because that's how we're gonna measure success if we should expand if and how the investment is gonna work.

And the part of the program includes um the uh child development associate, the CDA certificate, and it's fully funded, and all of the apprentices are enroll, and so we can get you the completion data as a metric because all of them enroll in that credential, and all of the credits in the program articulate um to associates or bachelor's degrees if they then choose um to go beyond for uh teaching.

And do you provide placements for um students who are in the program once they're done, or some of them already working in centers?

Some of them are already working, but we do do job matches and job placements.

Great, thank you.

CUNY is also requesting two millions over two years for the child development associate credit bearing program, which is a bilingual credit bearing CDA program that provides 12 credits to participant.

What is the cost for student enroll in this program?

Would the funds also allow certification to be provided for free?

The answer to the second part of that question is yes.

That I know that's the first and the part of that.

That is part that is the idea of the of the funding of the program to be able to have them participate and and get the those uh those credentials.

It's um it's run through the School of Professional Studies, uh, and there's been you know wide uh demand for it.

So it's nine thousand dollars uh per student that includes tuition fees, the credential exam fees as well, the career advisement, and um that is uh the cost is also dependent on the number of students that are enrolled.

There were 105 students in fiscal year, uh 26 in the program, and I do want to say that um last year 110 students graduated from the CDA certificate program, and of that 19 were from the Spanish language CDA that we recently offered.

And that cohort was just started in fall 25, and already 19 graduated in that program.

Wonderful, thank you.

Um, the credit transfers to the six associate and the bachelor's degree programs.

What are the six programs?

Sure.

Um, so we have uh seven CUNY programs, borough of Manhattan Community College, so BMCC, Hostos, Kingsborough, LaGuardia, Medger, CUNY SPS, and Bronx Community College.

Thank you for that.

Um the fiscal 2027 executive budget did not include restoration of 10.1 million for CUNY accelerated complete and engage the ACE program.

CUNY ACE provides bachelor degrees um seeking students with additional financial and academic support to ensure higher education is accessible in the fiscal 2026 funding level 10.1 million able to support all eligible students, if not how much additional funded is needed, and what's the average cost per student in the CUNY ACE program?

I'm going to defer to Pro Salvedo who's looking for that information, cost per student is the thing that I am trying to get for you.

Can't seem to find the cost per um student for ACE, but I know I have it.

Um I will tell you there are 5,603 students in academic year, 24 25.

And I can get you the cost per student that I know I will find at some point.

No worries.

Um are there any supports not currently offered through CUNY ACE that students have requested other than changes to the program?

CUNY is considering based on feedback from your student.

Are you considering any changes to the program?

No, what we are changing, not necessary feedback from students is with the utilization and acceleration of technology and AI, embedding that into some of the tools and technologies for the career advisement piece.

That's something that we're uh doing holistically, as well as into the identifying the right major and the match for the major and the more strategic advisement, the tools and technologies nowadays to alleviate some of the burden in the workload of the advisors and provide more personalized advisement.

And so that's something that we're implementing, not necessarily based off of student feedback.

They really appreciated having a dedicated advisor and the high touch, but that is a change that we are exploring.

Thank you.

In the executive budget, you also did not include restoration for point 4.6 for CUNY ASAP.

CUNY ASAP provides associate degree seeking students with intensive academic support as well as financial support such as free transportation and textbook.

What are the current funding level in fiscal 2026 and 2027 for CUNY ASAP?

The current funding?

Yep.

So I think we have the funding.

As of now, without the the recurring the funding, it would drop to 88.

And what is the 4.6 million supporting in fiscal 2026?

How would it impact programming if funding is not restored?

So it impacts, we were able to increase enrollment.

We actually utilized upwards of 98% of our allocation.

We were able to increase enrollment by 2,000 students as a result of the additional funding.

So we know the program works.

And so I knew we had this here.

The approximate costs per student in both ACEP and ACE is 3,440.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for being so detailed today.

Has um CUNY emphasized the importance of funding evidence-based program that dramatically improves student outcomes such as ACE, ASAP, in conversations with OMB.

Is CUNY aware of any rationale for why the funding of these programs was not included and baseline, and how can this council support CUNY's need for these funding?

So the part of the question is no, we don't know the the the rationale.

These are programs, ASAP is replicated in nine states.

So we think that the results are fairly obvious uh in terms of the impact that it has.

So if they work, we must continue to fund them to bring people through the doors.

So the fiscal 2027 executive budget also did not restore 7.8 million for CUNY Reconnect, which aims to bring working age adults with some college credit back to CUNY.

How many students are currently enrolled in the CUNY Reconnect?

And how many credits does the average student come back to CUNY with?

So in 25-26, we had uh 25,342 students.

Um we do not have uh the average number of credits that they've come back with, but we've asked for that analysis.

I can add some additional details that uh 1.2 million dollars was used for debt uh forgiveness for the students and um to clear their balances.

One of the things that I would love to highlight is that 14,597 students have graduated uh from the program since the program inception across associate, bachelor's, and master's degrees.

So we know it works, so we we have to make sure it's baselined in our budget.

Um Discovery and seek.

CUNY's opportunity program include college discovery and the Percy Ellis Sutton search for education elevation knowledge.

These programs support students in their academic and professional goals by providing additional academic, financial, and advising advising support at the two and four-year colleges.

What are the budgets for FY26 and 27 for college discovery and seek and how many students are currently enrolled in each of those programs?

So the number of students enrolled in each program is 1,537 for the fall 2025 headcount for the college discovery, 6,141 for the fall 2025 headcount for seek.

I know and I would defer to uh to Ken that there was an additional uh increment in the SIG budget right in the state, um, uh in the state budget, but that is the only additional support that we have received for uh either seek or cd.

28,000 for CD for college discovery, right?

And the the value the budget for college discovery in 26 was um about six million dollars.

Any of these programs that I mentioned earlier are going to be baselined?

The chancellor said it helps with planning.

You're asking if the city's gonna baseline the funding?

Right.

For these programs that works, they're evidence-based.

Well, the seek funding is mostly coming from the state, right?

Um, and uh so I mean again from our perspective, any funding for student success program that has regularity and is baseline uh is better for us in terms of planning and delivering the services to the students.

So any form of education.

If you know your funding is there, you're better to plan, you know how to hire educators and how many seats you have and all of that.

So that's across the board.

Agreed.

Um, omni omni cards.

I know the committee committee has reported um heard from students senate regarding the barrier of cost of transportation creating, causing many students to miss class, lose out on internships and campus activities, or risk a fee for fair evasion.

The students and it have put forward a request for 1.4 million for free omni card pilot program, which will provide free transportation to over 3,000 students.

Which CUNY programs currently provide omni cards to students, and what are the limitations of the omni cards?

You want to go, yeah.

Yep.

Uh, the programs are currently provide the free omni card are ASAP, ACE, CHAMPS, which is at Medgar Evers, and the SEC program.

And I want to add um Chair Joseph, uh, another component.

I know that the students talk about getting to class and the things that we know the key essentials, right?

As we move to providing more opportunities for students to do paid internships and all that, they also need to have the transportation cost to be able to get, right?

If we want to be exposing them to a lot more experiential things, they also need to be able to get there.

So I also want to uh at least one of the reasons why we supported the idea of the pilot uh that the obvious thing that we all think about is getting to class, right?

Basic, important, but in addition to that, if we want them to be out there taking advantage of paid internships and apprenticeship, the cost of transportation can be a barrier.

Okay, thank you for that.

The proposal includes students who were in foster care system.

Does the existing programs for foster care youth include transportation costs?

Let me check.

And I'm not sure if it's uh specific uh allocated.

They do not receive an actual omni card, but in some programs, for example, in SIC, we give uh transportation stipend for that utilization.

Um, and I can look to see but uh if the stipend is for transportation costs specifically.

Thank you.

The state budget includes 18.8 million for states reconnect program, which cover the cost of tuition fees and book for community college students aged 25 to 55 pursuing select associate degrees in high demand occupations, including nursing pathways into teaching technology and engineering.

The state budget include a new reconnect for foster scholar programs as well.

How much funding was allocated to the reconnect for foster scholar programs?

250,000.

Will the reconnect for foster scholar programs also have a limited age range and degree field?

If so, what are they?

We are in active conversations with the state on the details of the program.

And this would be an incredible opportunity also.

I know you've been a big advocate about this in the future.

So I mean it's an opportunity to create you know something from you, so suggestions about what's the best way to use that funding would be welcome those from the process.

I would love to do that.

Thank you.

Many people who have aged out of foster care are unaware of the options available to them.

How will Can you ensure that people are aware of this new program?

Well, I mean, we I mean, A, we work with a number of our community um groups that serve uh those students and getting the the the word out.

Um and uh and again welcome any suggestions on what other strategies we might be able to pursue.

I would love that.

Thank you very much.

Um, gonna pass it back to Chair Lee.

Okay, great.

Um we've also been joined by Councilmember Zavilas and Dinowitz, and we're gonna start with Councilmember Wong followed by Lewis.

Um thank you, Chair.

Um uh Chancellor Rodriguez, thank you for the coming today.

Um I have a question concerning um Hunter College.

Says over here, uh, executive budget uh CUNY's four-year plan allocates four hundred and twenty-one point eight million for new school construction of the Hunter College Brookdale campus.

Um the funds would just funds two million square feet of modern academic health care life sciences space.

Um I'm I'm interested in two things because uh I I hear from students that the experience in the Hunter College building is not been good.

We're talking about water mains and sewer lines that ruptures um uh instead of looking at the new spaces, anything being addressed to like the current problem, uh the current infrastructure, like uh how can students go to class uh with what the over the with the water main or sewer problems that that I've been hearing.

Please talk about it.

But then thank thank you for your question, and I'll let um our COO uh address some of that on the capital side with more specificity.

Two things too.

Clearly uh the Hunter main campus uh requires, and you know, as part of the conversation that we have before as to the allocation for critical maintenance to be able to make sure that uh A, we get to systems because before they they uh collapse or or break down, and that's what we want additional uh funding for critical maintenance.

Uh, but you were talking about the um the Brookda campus where we have also uh the renovation of the um of the nursing facility too uh and construction was just uh did we begin that on already for the uh in Brookdale?

No, I mean uh let me a so uh let's take the brook to properly.

As you know, that was part of a large uh announcement that was made by the previous administration uh around building uh sort of a life science uh facility.

CUNY was gonna have his own sort of uh building.

It would have um the nursing school as as the chancellor alluded to, the school of public health, uh, and some additional labs.

That project right now, as I understand it, is going to um they're going through the demolition phase of it.

They're they're getting the so they could begin the demolition phase of it.

We have now moved out of that facility, and um the nursing school is in a really really wonderful facility at uh F 40 Breakfast Street, where we have uh was was a previous school, and uh then one of the previous colleges was in there, and we retrofitted that that facility to accommodate our nursing school.

So our nursing, I mean, uh, yeah, nursing school.

So our nursing school is fine.

As part of the um, as I stated earlier, as part of the deferred maintenance and state of good repair, we allocate two colleges, um, uh various funding.

We focus in on those vital systems that could come offline for a particular college at a time.

The last time you raised the concern of the, and that was um a pipe that was frozen, and uh it was fixed immediately after that.

So the information was um have been taken care of uh a while ago, like uh as you probably know or and have heard our infrastructure is an agent infrastructure.

Most of our buildings, 60% of them are over 50 years old.

And uh on a on a five-year capital plan, our need is about 9.4 billion dollars, and we get about 2.00 billion dollars in a five-year plan.

So the need is higher than what we get, and so we try to really be targeted.

Uh we've done an assessment of all our facilities and really try to try to provide real targeted approach.

Uh obviously we're here advocating to make sure that you help us get additional funding.

Uh, but I'd be happy to if you have anything at Hunter College.

I I actually think that facility is one of the uh facilities that's really well run and they really stay on top of things, but I always, like anything else, things do fall through the cracks and we love to hear more about it and and be able to know our chair of your committee has really been laced to focus, and I we really do welcome the partnership because we we haven't had that partnership before in the at the council.

So that's really welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you, thank you.

The chair, I'll save my questions for round two.

Perfect.

Councilmember Lewis, followed by Morano.

Thank you, Chair.

Good to see you, Chancellor, and to everyone on the panel.

Good morning.

I have three questions, so I'm gonna try to barrel them out.

Uh the executive budget includes 15 million uh in baseline operational support beginning and fist beginning in fiscal 2027 for academic advisement, mental health services, career readiness, workforce preparation, and tutoring programs.

What enrollment growth, retention, and graduation outcomes does CUNY expect to achieve from this investment, and how will success be measured over the next several years?

My second question.

Uh, we know that graduate students, doctoral candidates, and students involved in research often depend heavily on federally funded grants and fellowships.

Has CUNY assess whether potential federal cuts would disproportionately impact graduate education research opportunities and workforce pipelines and what uh investments would be necessary to maintain those programs and federal support if federal support continues to decline.

My last question.

I'm taking notes, all right.

Uh you mentioned earlier to the chair, the uh Chair Lee had spoken to you about um uh enrollment.

So I wanted to know um how has uh how has enrollment significantly um grown over the last few years, and I wanted to know for constituents that um are watching today um that that's watching this hearing today.

I wanted to know how do you think um the CUNY reconnect um can open opportunities for them if they're thinking about college and how could that help?

So those are the three questions.

Thank you for uh for the questions.

Let me um, well, begin to begin uh I'm gonna respond to them in in the inverse order that you did them, right?

Uh and and uh and I'm sure you'll remind me if there's something uh missing.

Uh, so we have intensified uh on the enrollment side our partnership with the New York City Public Schools.

That is our main source of students, right?

And uh we've gone deep in working with them, sending personalized letters in the beginning of senior year, working with their parents, right?

Even earlier than senior year to make sure that they know that CUNY uh is ready for them and it's an opportunity.

And for example, one of the things that I'm very proud we did this year, the welcome letter we've been doing now for I think three years.

This year it went electronically.

My old-fashioned self wanted an old piece of paper, but the electronic version allow us to tell the students if they have been taking college now courses.

It could tell you you already have 15 credits of courses bank in, and you'll be saving this money, right?

So we are going to the questions that the caregivers and the students have.

So we're trying to individualize that as much as we can to make it personal and bring you in.

Reconnect key, three-quarter New Yorkers, three-quarter million New Yorkers, some college, no degree.

That is and reconnect has been our way to be able to bring all those people back who have some credits and need to finish their program to be able to get to their next uh to the next job.

So reconnect has been critical for us to be able to do that and to listen to what was it that led you to drop out in the first place so that we can prevent that.

Right.

With the students we have.

On the graduate student, um, your question clearly, the main um I mean, people talk about uh the funding being cut by the feds in this attack on on higher education and research funding, and and of course, innovation is being targeted.

But the other part that's a real tragedy is the pipeline of talent that we need to keep the research infrastructure that is getting decimated.

And in our case at uh CUNY, I'll be happy to provide you with with our breakdown.

Um, in the some of the programs that got canceled by the administration were many pipeline programs, right?

Um for students of colors and and other groups to be able to get PhDs, to be able to get uh postdoctorate awards, and we've lost a number of that, and that is really gonna have an impact in the diversity and the number of graduate students that we're gonna be able to have, which is the teaching force of the future and the research uh force of the future.

So I'm happy to you know provide you with some of the information because it's one of the things that we are very, very concerned about, and I know that um luckily we have incredible leadership at the graduate center with uh with Dr.

Bromberg working very closely to be able to see how we can be supportive of our graduate students in their PhD route.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Councilmember Morano, followed by Brewer.

Thank you.

Chancellor, thank you for your testimony.

Thank you for keeping it on the brief side, but chock full of information.

We've heard from a lot of other folks in these hearings that have much longer testimony, but shockingly, much less information.

So, my compliments.

Um, your testimony highlights enrollment growth, retention gains, internship expansion, workforce development, AI initiatives, and several requests for additional funding.

If we come back here three years from now, what are the three metrics you would want taxpayers to judge CUNY by?

Oof.

Uh, thank you.

Thank thank you for that question.

Sure.

Uh, I mean, enrollment growth and retention are vital to the physical health of the university, and we are in a budget hearing, so I will highlight that.

Uh, there's also human people with degrees and human capital going to make our city great and stuff.

So I think that that is a key uh uh measurement.

That's what we led with uh with enrollment.

We are really focused on uh rethinking and and CUNY beyond is that the way that from the get-go, we work with our students in having them be exposed and thinking about careers.

It's not about forcing anybody to do anything they don't want to do, it's open the doors of opportunity and then having curriculum, courses, opportunities that allow you to be exploring things earlier uh and then transitioning in an easier way into um into the workforce, right?

And I think that the nation is asking all of us to be doing that for the students, and uh and we need your partnership on the capital side.

Uh to do so so with those three yes uh that you mentioned uh retention enrollment.

Enrollment and career success and capital.

Would you support publishing those metrics annually in a simple public dashboard so taxpayers can see whether the investments they're making are actually producing the outcomes that are promised?

So I will say that many of those metrics are publicly available in our website now and maybe there's a way in which we can be more direct and focused I think if I'm getting a gist of your question it'd be in that direction uh our you know enrollment graduation retention data is uh I'm making sure with the proposal here available on the work site we are actually working on what are the right metrics to be thinking about career success right um so we'll welcome feedback on that and then our information on the capital projects and all of that it's also available on the website if if there's suggestions about how to do that differently always welcome to that uh you spent a lot of time on AI which is great which degree programs currently produce the uh strongest employment outcomes and highest earnings for graduates and and which programs consistently struggle to connect graduates to jobs particularly keeping in mind the AI era that we're going into and that we're in well so your AI question is prospective right uh so that that that is a crystal ball of looking at how things are going to uh we do have uh data on some of the metrics that you mentioned in your question be happy to uh engage uh with with the committee on those uh and provide them and they're becoming also part of of some of the things that we're getting asked for uh in the state and the federal government so happy to provide that to you thanks very much thank you great uh council member brewer followed by Epstein thank you so I always ask about the North Building I want it to be affordable housing at John Jay what's going on with the North Building I'll let uh and you always give me the same answer which I don't like go ahead answer already counsel no go ahead say most of the answer go ahead sure thank you for your question we um we are you know obviously still analyzing um as you know there's an active litigation and based on the active litigation that's going on with the with the government uh foundation we are um uh you can't really talk about uh sort of what what the plan is for the future at at the school but our goal is to continue to assess what the need of that school is and to make sure that that need is is being met.

When it comes to with regards to North Hall yeah we are analyzing uh North Hall to see what's what's the best use and what's in the best interest of the university okay I still want affordable housing there it seems to me that that would be a priority so we'll keep working on that um the other reason I have is I think we talked about mental health services but just generally how many uh folks are employed or mental health uh uh professionals um what how many more would you like to hire I must admit I was a little disappointed in the numbers for for um ASAP because I thought it should be higher in terms of finishing and I think that these services are helpful to get people through so um how many sessions is a student provided with the council just generally mental health services what you need and what you think is working so um the number of mental health uh counselors that could be hired with uh um requested two point um eight million dollars we are currently employ a hundred and twenty FTEs we would like to have two more per community college for a total of 14 additional mental health um uh clinicians okay and um if those have to be uh left campus because they're not able to be dealt with locally do they have insurance is that an issue that you have to address, or is it not an issue?

So if you have to go outside of the campus for help, do you know if there's always ability to get insurance, or is that an issue?

Well, I can say that we provide uh some free services.

We have uh partnerships with other entities and organizations, um, uh hotline that's available 24-7, chats that are available, so we make um as many services, free services available to our students, um, should insurance be an issue if they were recommended out.

Okay.

Do you know in terms of the new excellent program with public schools?

Do you know how many more students came in with that program that I think you initiated with the with SUNY a few years ago?

You have some sense of the numbers of people who came in because of left waiver fees, all the ways in which you're trying to get more public school students to go to CUNY.

Well, I mean, I I think that that one metric is not all, right?

The the three or four percent increase that we've received in enrollment, uh, the bulk of our enrollment comes from the New York City Public Schools, right?

So that is a rough uh estimation of of that investment.

All right, so there's no new number, it wasn't an increase.

I thought there would be a large increase as you did the letters and you made extra effort.

I can get you the exact the exact uh figures for that.

Okay.

I'd love second round if possible, thank you.

Great.

Okay.

Uh Councilmember Epstein, followed by Wilson.

Hi, you doing, Chancellor.

This is this is this is new.

Thank you.

I'm used to seeing you in Albany.

I know.

It's good seeing you here as well.

Same, yes.

Um, hey, can we uh just check in about the omni cards for students, what the 700 uh thousand will get you, how many additional students you'll give cards to for that additional funding?

Do what is it it's in the you mean with a pilot that we were?

Yeah, you you were asking for another 700,000.

Let me just get that.

I'll get you that number.

Okay, give me your next.

Yeah.

So, I'm concerned about students who can't continue in school.

Do you what are the top three reasons you hear students are leaving school?

Is it because of transportation?

Is it housing security?

Is it cost of tuition?

What are we hearing from students that are reasons that they are not be able to finish their degree?

So the the most common reasons tend to be non-academic reasons, right?

It have to do with uh either medical emergencies uh in their families is is a big category.

Uh situations about employment, right?

Many of our students work part-time and full-time, and that is impacted, it impacts their capacity to be able to uh uh to say focus.

Those tend to be sort of the highest uh categories.

I mean, food insecurity and housing security are also big categories for students too.

So economics plays a role in the percentage of students who are dropping out?

Absolutely.

And so uh just on that the economic side, so omnicards one I know you're doing well with getting food pantries on campuses.

Um uh so on the housing and security, uh I know for ASAP and other programs there are potential funding.

Do you see that as a bucket where we could solve for the housing and security?

Well, I mean, I think one of the main uh in the CUNY CARES model, right?

And those are just a pilot with the schools in the bronze.

Well we have learned there is that we can be good um providers with the navigators of information to the students about what their options are, and sometimes they're not aware of housing options that might be available to them.

Uh so that would be a model for us since we don't have uh really a housing stock, right?

Huge number of dorms.

Uh, we need to rely on partnerships, and the the CUNY cares model has been a way in which we've seen many students refer and dealt with those issues.

Uh and I think.

I know I two years ago we talked about tracking students who had dropped out of CUNY and come back in and that you were following up with them to try to get them back in the program.

How successful has that been in the last two years?

Well, so we we can get you some numbers on that from the reconnect.

I don't have those with those, but those have been a key, and and for us also, not only is it joy of having them back and now seeing them being in track to succeed, is learning about what led you to leave so that we prevent it uh in the future.

Yeah, I mean, we've talked a lot about the the especially students.

Obviously, this is you said it from the beginning that CUNY is a pathway out of poverty for many New Yorkers, as this is a pathway to get people to have successful education.

And if we can really target our energy of people who wanted to get into a CUNY, but had a drop out, figure out what those economics are, we can really kind of protect them and support them in that process.

And I think that's what we're trying to get to here.

And the baseline of Reconnect would be indispensable to get that done.

And the demand is clearly there.

Yeah, and the data, like I'd love to be able to share that data so we can look at it.

Thank you, Chairs.

Thank you.

Okay, we've also been joined by Councilmember Maloney as well as Melee, who I saw.

There she is.

Um and next we have Councilmember Wilson followed by Evie Les.

Thank you, Chair.

Hi there, Chancellor.

How are you?

Um couple questions.

So the first one is regarding so next year the New York City public schools will be uh to graduate will be evaluated under a new framework, the portrait of a graduate framework.

So um, which is great to show that there's other ways to uh get a diploma other than regents testing, but the the the qual the standards are a little vague at the moment.

So I'm curious what resources are being applied to ensure New York City public school uh graduates who uh enter uh CUNY, which is a huge number, uh, are that they're gonna be fully prepared to meet the demands um and reap the rewards of uh CUNY education.

Well, thank you for that question.

First, uh we have a number of members of our faculty of our ministry team who are part of the conversations uh in that redesign along with uh our friends in the New York City public schools, right?

So we're really part of the conversation to be as ready as possible so whenever that is finalized, right?

We can then be be ready uh to adapt and and and face those those things.

The other great component that we have is we have such a deep investment in college now and early college, right?

So we are uh, you know, providing those courses and doing those things along with the New York City public schools.

So we're getting all that feedback early to be able to be in the best position to uh be ready from whatever that that new portrait that would have probably more options and more flexibility, right?

I think to your point, for us to be able to be ready for them.

Great.

So you've been a collaborative partner in building the process.

That's great.

Um so we know that the Trump administration has made really devastating and arbitrary cuts to humanities and sciences and medicine.

How does this uh budget reflect steps you're taking to ensure uh that we uh that you're taking in step to save research uh that's being cut?

Yeah.

Well, thank you for that question, and and uh have to commend uh the provost here when we face some of the first uh lines of uh cuts on some of the federal uh grants, right?

And and later we found ways uh to fight some of those and get some of that money back, right?

Um, and I can give you the breakdown of what we lost.

But the Provost initiated uh funding program to be able to support some of the researchers, right?

I mean, we couldn't make the entire amount of the of the grant, but enough to sort of keep some of the key projects uh um going and and moving forward.

And you know, as I mentioned in answering the the question from Councilwoman Lewis, uh I'm also very worried about and those we couldn't restore the pipeline programs that many of our schools had the graduate center, some of the other campus, to bring the next generation of scholars uh with um, you know, that that were decimated, and that's gonna affect our human capital in terms of teachers and researchers.

Thank you for the question.

Can I have a little more?

Yeah, it's gonna be quick.

So um just about capital needs.

So we you know we talk a lot about that across the university system, but at the same time in my district at the Hunter College has owns a vacant building at 450 West 41st Street in Hills Kitchen, that's been unused for a decade.

It's a huge source of strain in the community.

So, how does how are you evaluate underutilized properties uh when determining your your capital strategy?

Um, specifically how how do you balance the generating revenue from assets that could have public benefit like affordable housing, community facility or future educational uses.

So so you have uh beautifully addressed our dilemma uh in terms of that, but I'll let uh our COO answer that question.

So you're talking about the MFA building.

Oh yes.

So as you know, we we have been in uh and conversations with the community board with your predecessor now, the senator, around what what are the possibilities with that site?

We have always been open to having uh partnerships and thoughts around that site.

The one thing that I really have been focused on, as you know, we had a situation where we have squatters in there, had to go in and and really remove those squatters and try to seal up the space.

We've we try to do things to address some of the concerns the communities have raised.

I'm always open to hear what your concerns are.

So we could be together uh address them.

Um but you know, it's it's a property that we're analyzing to determine what's the best use.

Obviously, my main concern is always to make sure that we're using the property in the best interest for the university first, and then obviously how can we provide what the university needs, the colleges need, and also uh work on the you know, sort of the community the greater good.

And so we're always always open to those discussions.

Well, the first the current use is in the best interest of no one, and uh I would really value uh sit down to talk about the future because it's been a real problem for a long time.

Happy to have that conversation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um we've also been joined by majority leader brew as well as Deputy Speaker Williams, and we have Avila's followed by Dinos.

And we've been joined by Wrestler.

How many students?

Thank you, thank you so much.

Um, first and foremost, I just want to um thank the whole CUNY team for being here for the work that you do um shepherding uh New York City's prized uh institutions.

Um we we deeply appreciate it.

I wonder if you could, I know in your testimony, which I was not here to um to hear, but Reed, could you could you elaborate a little bit more on the um constructive dialogue institute?

Um can you tell us um a little bit about how long this uh initiative has been in play, um, how much the funding of the program currently supports, and what would be the need, the funding need in order to appropriately expand it throughout the campuses.

So thank thank you for your question.

Uh the funding for the CDI, which began about a year and a half ago, depends on funding from the city council.

We're asking for additional funding for that.

I think we're asking for uh three quarter million um in uh for the year, and it's indispensable to continue the work that we've been doing.

We also got some grants um uh from two foundations initially to get uh to do a pilot and get it getting going.

Um one of the things that is really wonderful about that program is that we have the work of the trainers from the CDI team, but they're working to adapt that to however campuses are doing different kinds of initiatives.

So some campuses are including um engaged with a constructive dialogue and dealing with difficult conversations in freshman seminars.

So they're working with the faculty who are doing that to bring in that to that component there.

Uh in some other cases they're working with uh with student groups and other groups to be able to work with the student groups as the student groups get ready to face programming that they do.

So it's been a very, very adaptable uh program.

And um, and again, I am really proud that we're the only institution in the country that's doing this system-wide, right?

So it's not just a campus, and the the funding from the city council on this would be crucial to to keep it to keep it going.

Does the current does the current level allow cover the entire system?

So so we we did that with some of the combining the past funding from the council with some philanthropic funding that that we received.

Um you know that funders like to give you money for a couple of years, and they say somebody else should pick it up, right?

So we're hoping that in that case it's the council that does that.

So we would need that to continue to be system-wide.

Right.

Definitely is something within our interest.

Um thank you for the question.

To to baseline um uh as an important program.

Can just to segue a little bit into um, you know, immigrants make New York City the beautiful um city that it is.

Can you talk to us a little bit about um you I know you host CUNY Citizenship Now, which we have very um uh big supporters of.

They do fantastic work.

Thank you for that.

Can you tell us a little bit more about how you are feeling about our current environment and plans on keeping uh New York City immigrants college students safe?

Well, thanks for the question, and thanks to the council for the great support of citizenship now throughout many, many, many years.

Uh I was at John Jay uh about a month ago, and you know, 300 people.

I think uh Council uh Woman Brewer and some of you were there too.

Uh 300 people trying to get that last uh um moving from you know permanent status to uh to full citizenship.

So the demand is there.

Uh we've also uh in order to support our students, uh, we raise independent uh funding um from the Petrie Foundation that help us provide uh triage legal services for students who might be um you know uh intercepted by by ICE, right?

We found out that in many cases uh either individuals go to places that basically take their money and don't provide any real legal services, right?

Uh so we provide a service, we cannot take them on as clients, but at least at that time when you're having the first triage, we can point out and say here's some legitimate lawyers, here's some legitimate nonprofits that work with you.

We can stabilize, um, and and that's been, I think, very well received by the community.

Uh we have an office uh at the central office dealing with how we can support our students and campus do that in different ways.

But it's very, very much top of our mind, and thank you to the council for the support of citizenship now.

Thank you.

Just to make a last comment, Chair.

Um, you know, New York City public school educators and parents have asked the public school system to provide revised protocol around how to keep their students safe, their staff safe, um, because the protocol within the building is one thing, but right outside the building is a whole other thing.

I would also like to posit that challenge to CUNY around how it makes sure that everyone from the security guard to the groundskeeper, um, to all the staff are very clear about their obligations under New York City Sanctuary City policy and also their moral obligations to keep each other safe during such a dark time.

So thank you.

Would love to talk to you more.

Thank you for that suggestion.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Councilmember Maloney, followed by Majority Leader of Reyes.

Thank you so much.

I wanted to ask more about CUNY Beyond.

Um, you mentioned that you're asking for 2.7 million for that program with a plan to expand to 19 undergraduate campuses by 2030.

I want to hear more about how investments in CUNY Beyond, in particular the AI innovation fund are meeting the city's workforce needs and how you evaluate where you should be investing more with matching with employers.

Well, thank you for the question.

So, you know, CUNY Beyond is really uh going when you take CUNY, um, 77, you know, percent graduate debt-free, uh, almost equal number, don't pay any tuition, incredibly affordable, great asset in our cat in our faculty, and right, so what we want is to build more on the human capital of our students as they think about careers.

So beyond is about making sure that our students are thinking and being exposed to careers from day one when they get into a campus, right?

And they can then uh contribute more.

We think that that differentiator, when we get to do that well, is gonna be a driver of enrollment, right?

Parents and students are asking for places that are giving them better chances to connect with careers at the end of graduation.

Um, so we really see it as what we owe to our students and a great tool um to beef up enrollment and to be responsive to the community of employers uh out there.

If we have, as the five pillars of CUNY Beyond have uh more career-oriented curriculum, the AI component will be part of that, right?

Because we'll be looking at all the different uh majors and and and careers and how AI is figuring that out in the marketplace, is going to be coming to us in terms of upgraded curriculum, more individuals from industry coming to teach as adjunct for students, and our students being also more active in paid internships and apprenticeships, right?

So all that should create students that are ready to meet uh meet the moment, and that's why we are very bullish on CUNY Beyond as a key strategy for us moving forward.

And what are some of the metrics that you can share on job placement, earning potential by different segments like teachers, healthcare workers, technology professionals for CUNY Beyond program and the benefits that come from?

So I'll be happy to to provide you with details on what we have.

The the the other component uh is that we're trying to figure out what are the right metrics in terms of return of investment, right?

In terms of a student comes to CUNY, they participate in this process, right?

How do you really measure uh that element of success?

If you look at what most schools use now, um, it's very rudimentary data, right?

It's surveys going out to students, and we want to be a lot more scientific to be able to come back and really measure ourselves to make sure that we're delivering for the students.

But I can give you what we have now, which is mostly based on information that comes from the New York State Department of Labor, uh, is what we use.

I would be happy to provide that to you in any way that you are interested in.

Can I ask one follow-up?

Okay, quickly.

Okay, and uh on artificial intelligence.

I'm wondering if you could paint a picture on how those tools are being used as educators in the classroom and also how you're preparing AI literacy skills.

If I don't get the provost answer that, she will explode.

Um so last year we received uh uh some funding from the state and AI, and we created an AI innovation fund, and we allocated um 3.2 million dollars across the 25 colleges across four specific areas.

One was um AI education and literacy, um, so how uh faculty created um courses, started embedding it within the general education framework.

Um we also have um embedded it into an AI-enabled student and academic support, so looking at the academic advisement services and the technologies and the tools.

We also had a category on addressing ethical and social implications of AI, which is just as important as the AI literacy, and we are getting ready to roll out an AI 101 course that would be available to all students, faculty, and staff to ensure the literacy, and we were very strategic in the funding, welcoming and partnering with the colleges, with the faculty, with the staff, on how to embed AI ethically and make sure that we support this and and piloting some of this.

And so in the fall, we everyone now has uh provided reports on the outcomes of uh these pilots so we can assess, evaluate, and see what is scalable.

Okay, great.

Um, majority leader Brave, followed by council member wrestler, and I'm just trying to be mindful of time so if we keep both questions and responses as succinct as possible.

Thank you.

Thank you, Charlie.

And thank you, Mr.

Chancellor, for being here today.

There's been a push for CUNY students to receive free OmniCards to help them get to and from classes.

Can you please talk a bit about some of the challenges students face currently and if there's been any discussion with the administration on this?

So thank you for that.

We actually found the number of it'd be 3,100 students.

We got asked before about for the pilot that we put in the in the green sheet, how many students will benefit.

So that is the uh that is the number.

We want to make sure that as many students who need the omni cars to get to class, but not just to get to class, but also to be able to go to paid internships, to be out there uh connecting to the programs that we have um so they can be fully participating.

We want to try to maximize what programs already exist, like encouraging students to be part of fair fairs, if that's something that they qualify for uh from.

So we're trying to take a holistic approach to to cover as many students as we as we can with that very basic uh support.

And what's the price tag for that?

What for the the pilot what we asking the council was seven hundred and fifty?

Okay.

We would love to see that in the adopted budget as the chair of the transportation committee.

This is something that we find very, very important.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Chancellor.

Okay, great.

Councilmember Restler, followed by Deputy Speaker.

Thank you, Chair Lee and Chair Joseph for both of your great leadership, Chancellor.

Good to see you and team.

Um I imagine that Ken is happier to be here wearing a CUNY hat than an OMB hat.

And pin, not a hat.

Pin, excuse me, but a friendlier response from this side of the dais.

Um, it's good to see you all.

Um and I really just first and foremost want to thank you for your work.

Uh underscoring the the points I heard uh Councilmember Aviles make, you know, CUNY is the place where social mobility happens.

It is the place where we transform people's lives from, you know, struggling in poverty to real economic opportunity and being able to provide and sustain support for a family.

Um I did want to ask a couple questions about hiring at CUNY.

Um, my recollection was that we were able to restore, I think 94 million dollars after six or seven rounds of budget cuts by Eric Adams in last year's budget.

Do I have that number right?

That's correct.

Great.

And already the mayor has added and baseline fifteen million dollars for CUNY in the executive budget.

Is that right as well?

Yes.

So you guys are doing better.

Um still more to go and and we hope to be great champions for CUNY, and I was very pleased by some of the suggested investments in the council's budget response.

But I'm concerned that we haven't seen a restoration in hiring that would uh match that increase in funding.

If I have my numbers right, prior to COVID, there were four thousand six hundred and forty-eight pedagogic pedagogical employees at CUNY, and we're now down to four thousand two hundred and fifty seven, almost a ten percent decline.

With the ninety-four million dollars that we got restored last year, with the additional funding that we've gotten restored this year, are you able to provide any indication to us of the increased headcount that can be anticipated in FY27 on the pedagogical side in particular?

So the the getting an exact number of that gets complicated because hiring on faculty is done on a campus by campus basis and those needs are are very individualized, right?

So um, can you give me a ballpark if not an exact head count of where we're heading?

Because I think we want to make sure that when we're investing in CUNY that we're also investing in the faculty of CUNY and expanding it.

And with the 10% plus decline that we've seen over the last five odd years, we want to see it reversed.

So we and we're on the same page.

A couple of notes, right?

Even though we've done gains in enrollment, we're still about 10-12% less than we were in the pandemic.

I know it, right?

So I think that that needs to be put in context.

And the restoration last year in the budget is one year, hiring, right, particularly of full-time personnel takes about a year uh to be able to do that.

On the 50 million, we have to be careful last year because it was not um recurring, right?

So you're careful about not putting people that are gonna be on recurring costs.

So I think that in the next year's budget, you'll begin to see that shit being corrected in in a in a more precise way because it takes about a year or so to see those things come into the budget because of the way we hire.

Can I have one more for you?

Oh, we're committed to the same thing.

Okay, I'm glad to hear it.

If you're willing or able in follow-up to this hearing to provide any estimates or goals of what you're anticipating on the pedagogical hiring front for the year ahead, I think it would further uh reinforce the council's commitment to support for CUNY.

Um and then lastly, I represent City Tech.

Uh we regularly get incoming from the faculty at City Tech about the conditions that staff and students are working in.

And I recognize that we have significant outstanding capital needs across the CUNY campuses, uh, and and we need to do a whole lot more to invest in that capital infrastructure.

But at City Tech we get reports of molding classrooms, leaks, and more.

And I understand CUNY's current goal is to bring about 55% of vital building systems into a state of good repair by 2030.

Gosh, I wish we could get that to 100%.

Um, but I recognize that it's a lot of resources and work that's needed just to get to over half of our our building systems in a state of good repair.

What do you think the timeline is to get to a hundred percent do we even have that kind of big picture goal of by 2040 we're gonna get 100% of our um uh vital building systems in a state of good repair what is there a capital need do you have a kind of complete physical needs assessment for the CUNY portfolio of what we would need to come up with to be able to get there well that that is our request in in the total capital plan right which is nine um 9.7 billion right so that that would be the the the answer to that to get to 100 you have to go through 32 35 50 so we're trying to move as quickly as we can and depending on the level of resources that we receive from the state and the city another thing that we've been very very uh working very hard is to do better at being quicker at being able to use the funds that we're given right which is another component uh of this uh we've been also making sure that our partner in in that entity which is DASNI is also you know uh also very responsive so um the the more funding that we receive um and particularly for the community college when you have to do the match with the state we'll get to be able to have a lot less of those concerns that you identify which we take very seriously and we appreciate you bringing them to our attention okay I I appreciate the answer and and I think we just we want it we all want to do more together to improve the conditions on our community campuses and I think being even more ambitious in our capital plan is necessary.

So thank you for the extra time chairs and thank you Chancellor as always for your tremendously we've been joined by Councilmember Hudson and now we have Deputy Speaker followed by Hudson.

Good afternoon afternoon.

Your college is an important institution in Southeast Queens are there any plan investments program expansions or workforce development initiatives specifically impacting York students and the surrounding community well thank you uh Dr.

Williams for your question and I am very happy that in the second wave of CUNY beyond which is really our uh innovative strategy to be able to make sure that our students are thinking about careers and getting ready for careers since day one that in the next the second way of course is your college is one of the schools that are being identified which will mean that should we be receiving additional funding from say in the city it would go to uh to your college uh for investments and it's also a badge of distinction for your college as they go seek uh to talk to employers and get philanthropic dollars so we really feel that that designation is going to be really really instrumental to York in terms of uh enrollment and and all those factors okay and then last year I asked a question about the 30 million dollars that was supposed to be allocated to your college to address the groundwater flooding issue um do you have any updates on that because last year the answer was not precise um do you want to know that the answer last year you all talked about it and said that it was gonna happen um but there wasn't a clear timeline.

Sure thank you for the question councilwoman um we are um we just completed uh the consultant just completed phase one of um the the work that's being done that's the grouting work uh around the the plan phase two uh which is the mechanical design will be completed by early 2027 uh the project was uh originally was uh it was about 25 million dollars uh based on the work that we have been able to do it's now down to 10 million dollars so we've been even some value engineering that has allowed us to to bring that project so that project is right on target uh to be to be completed.

We are also, I know one of the other concerns you've raised, we've also uh are in conversations with DEP about the charges that they're charging the college, which is uh over the last couple of years has been about 400 thousand dollars, um, to try to uh really figure out how those charges could be removed from the from the because there's a it's a burn on on a college that really needs the resources, so um, sort of more to come there, but we're right on target to be able to address this.

So hopefully by next year, when I'm in front of you again, we'll be able to celebrate that we've got this project sort of completed.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks, Chairs.

Okay, Councilmember Hudson, followed by Dinwitz.

Thank you so much.

Hello, Chancellor and team.

Um, you mentioned in your in your testimony uh work that you do around CUNY cares, really important work.

Um we have a transition academy at Medgar's College, which is in my district.

And I'm just wondering, you know, given the number of students that are experiencing homelessness, food insecurity, things of that nature, how much um in your budget is allocated towards supporting those students.

So it varies by campus and and depending on the kind of support, and thank you for your question.

Um for example, things like um the food pantries and and and that level of support, um, that is mostly philanthropic dollars that are raised from foundations.

The Petri Foundation has been historically a great partner of ours for decades uh in in some of that partnership with local vendors, right?

So that that tends to be a bit more uh localized.

In CUNY CARES, for example, one of the things that we learned from that experiment in the Bronx is that we're probably ready to do something and it'd be probably the next expansion of CUNY CARES, which is to get students immediately to know whether they qualify for SNAP or not and be able to get all those benefits.

And you know, we mentioned the testimony that we got about three million dollars back for the students.

The other thing that I want to say is that it's also three million bucks that went to the local bodegas and businesses where our students buy the food too, right?

So this is something that if we do right, we're helping the students with food insecurity, but it's also a little bit of economic development in our neighborhoods.

Yeah, I I would agree and and I commend you for that work.

I think it's really important work.

I have legislation trying to make automatic enrollment possible for um you know certain benefits, and also I fund food pantry, the food pantry specifically at the Transition Academy and provide services, we do resource fares, all of that.

But um, I'm wondering if you can maybe ballpark a figure that would be helpful for you to have to address the needs of, you know, because the reality is there are so many CUNY students who are struggling to make ends meet.

And if there was, you know, you're you're helping them to bring in three million dollars in resources and food, let's say, um, but I'm trying to figure out how much are you spending.

I get that some of the money is philanthropic, but how much are you spending in order to make that happen?

And could I mean I know you could use more, but what would be an amount that would be.

Well, so in in our green sheet, which is our request, we have 2.8.

Uh, the council already has a food insecurity initiative to be able to supplement and expand that.

And if you think also then about the CUNY cares component, if we expand the benefits hub, that's something additional that can help uh all the all the campuses.

So the request uh on food insecurity is two point five.

Okay, thank you so much.

Thank you, Chairs.

Okay, Councilmember Dinawith.

Morning.

Good morning, good to see you.

Good to see you as always, the whole team here.

Um last hearing I asked a question about local IT of 2023, which provides a DOE and now CUNY, a DOE can send IEP data electronically to colleges of choice since that time.

I know we've been working together, CUNY DOE to create a memorandum of understanding that the data will automatically uh be sent over.

I'm confirming that this is on path that all graduates, high school graduates with an IEP, uh 2026 will have their IEP data shared directly with CUNY.

Let me allow the provost to give you an update on on this very important initiative.

Yes, I can confirm that last week um the so the agreement and the the details of the agreement have already been worked out, but last week uh both the DOE and CUNY's IT departments met together to talk about how does this actually work and have fleshed out a few things?

They might have one or two more follow-up meetings before things then proceed to the lawyers for signing.

So we are on track by the summer to have everything in place and uh yeah, good.

And one of the goals of that was not just so you have the data, but that you can proactively reach out to students with disabilities.

I believe according according to your estimates, you believe half of students with disabilities are not declaring or don't uh for whatever reason maybe they don't know there are services available to them.

So will CUNY reach out directly to students that are on the radar now as having listed as having an IEP or disability?

Absolutely.

Will you be reaching out by phone?

So by email, by mail, what is the outreach look like?

Well, the uh the students indicate uh and provide contact information, so it may be email, maybe phone, um, but traditionally students prefer email, um, but we will try any means that the student have given us permission to do so.

Good.

Just confirming that CUNY's CUNY will be reaching out.

So is the expectation if they leave a phone number and an email, will then some professional from CUNY be reaching out by phone and email to make sure they know the services available to them?

I can receive confirmation if we do both.

Um, but absolutely it will be on CUNY to reach out, and that was part of the agreement that we'd receive that information so that enables CUNY to proactively reach out to the students.

If if we have the permission, and the information, we reach out.

They what what we're trying to be careful here is not to promise something that legally we might not be able to do.

Well, this is the point of the memorandum of understanding is to make it legal.

And then the the ultimate goal is for for CUNY to do the outreach so the students have all the opportunity.

Same page.

Secondly, I'd like to follow up on your personalized letters.

Uh, we this was there was a hearing on this a few years ago.

I just want to clarify what personalize letters mean.

Uh my understanding is personalized letters means every DOE student gets a letter with their name on it.

But do these letters also include things like course recommendations, specific colleges based on uh the coursework the student is taking?

Is it based on the students' GPA?

Is there any targeted letter other than you know that the the individual students' name?

So so don't minimize what it took to get an individualized letter the first time that didn't have uh some of those things, right?

But if with every iteration of the letter, we are better at being able to personalize it more.

For example, this year, the letter, and it goes electronically to be able to do that, included, for example.

Uh congratulations, Eric.

We look forward to seeing you at at CUNY.

Um you heard it here.

I just got uh admission to CUNY.

Thank you.

Since you participated in college now, you already have.

If you come to CUNY, you have already 15 credits, which will mean that you'll be saving X amount of money, right?

So we've been able to tailor the letters each time more to be able to uh provide the students the most accurate information that they need.

We want to continue that level of individualization, but the letters are to that level of detail, and we want to continue to do more uh to be able to provide them, for example, for some of the students that might be part of future ready, right?

We might be able to, based on that data, make some suggestions about majors that they can take.

So the more that we know, the more we'll be able to make that letter to them and to their caregivers.

Yeah, that would be the ultimate goal, I think, is to make actual recommendations.

The addition of college now it seems is very good.

Making recommendations for particular colleges or particular majors based in their coursework seems like the ultimate goal and the actual personalization of the letters.

Um thank you.

Thank you, chairs.

Thank you, Chancellor.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Um, at our preliminary, this will be my last question, and you can leave.

At our preliminary budget hearing, I asked data on the specific campuses and positions where vacancies exist.

Do you have this data?

If not, what is your timeline for providing it?

How many vacancies currently exist across the whole system, and what are some of the challenges you face as folks are retiring?

So we don't have that.

Uh, we'll get it to you, ASAP.

Before the budget, before we pass the budget, right?

Absolutely.

Yes.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Yes, and apologies to the council members for round two.

They have a very important board of trustees meeting where they're gonna be deciding on a lot of uh important things.

So we will send all of our follow-up questions, and uh, we also have been joined by Councilmember Mercedes Nurses.

Um, and with that, thank you so much, Chancellor, and to your team, and for everyone for being here.

Thank you.

Thank you for your support.

Good afternoon.

We should be moving to education shortly.

As you walk in, please find your seat.

Quietly, please find your seat.

Just a reminder, no food or beverages are allowed in the chambers, and no one may approach the day.

Thank you.

Quiet down, please, quiet down, please find your seats.

Please find your seats.

Thank you.

I see some of your folks, but uh I don't know.

Rednes went up to monitor everybody where they would have a lot of if everyone can please just find their seat.

Please find your seat.

We are getting ready to begin.

Uh my uncle was your constituent, he passed away.

His phone was sad.

I didn't want to tell you.

The funeral was Saturday.

Last Saturday?

No, this Saturday I just passed.

That's why I've been MIA.

And um Monique has been giving us she thinks she's so powerful, but you know what?

You probably seen him around.

He's also the funeral, and when?

It passed.

It was this Saturday.

You say you keep saying pass that I say pass that is to know.

And I'm gonna say, okay, last time.

He's at a my mom and he's very upset with the hospital.

They didn't do a good job.

Yeah.

What do you have?

He had a stroke.

Yeah, the stroke?

Yeah, he had a stroke.

No, no, I'm not here.

I'm I'm moving myself.

Wait, yeah, it's empty?

Yeah.

Oh, you want to keep it in here?

You can put me here.

So we're sorry.

Oh wrong.

I can't have a flavor.

I have a council.

Yeah.

I don't want you.

Oh, it's a lot of baby.

Oh, I was thinking, maybe.

But I was sitting here first.

I was standing there and I'm about to sit and then she he said, but you had name what was not here.

So how I took your seats.

How do I take a seat?

Oh, okay.

Oh, it's no problem.

I love that.

I love that.

Oh, okay.

I love this people.

I mean, I love you.

No one said you was a fair.

I just explained.

You know?

I said, let me explain.

I know it's just a and then she apologized.

It's so sweet.

I love that.

I do love it.

I do.

Okay, Pharaoh.

You're trying to play.

Last time I was fucking meeting Alfie and me and Alpha ended up meeting up for weeks.

I know.

I did hear about that meetup.

I was like, oh, Farah met with you.

You know I get jealous.

Yeah, when you have to do that.

Oh no.

Cause I love patients.

I don't have to be jealous about that because you guys love me.

So I'm never jealous about that.

Okay.

But no, when y'all meet up with that meeting.

Oh.

But should they reach out to see if we could walk for it next time?

Oh okay.

You know what?

It's a meeting that we haven't.

I know they love you.

They don't have no problem with you.

I know.

Yeah.

I just say I have to represent it.

I got a lot of stuff.

Okay.

How do you say like lots of drama in Korea?

And I want to stay away.

Ooh.

And how do I say credit?

I want to stay away from the drama?

What's your mom?

I want to stay.

I want to stay away from the drama.

Me too.

I want to do like this.

Yeah, I know.

No one is it is messy design.

It's not it's not only Haitian that's messing.

That's not my problem.

I'm not in the state.

No.

Oh, that they need capacity training.

No, and he was like, oh, the Haitian community came back and just uh, I said no comment.

So I love that.

I'd be like, I don't know.

No problem.

I'd be like, I don't know whatever.

I may already have two.

But they didn't ask me for the capital this year.

Oh, the microphone.

I'm not to ask you.

Okay.

Okay.

Oh, I know.

All right.

Welcome, welcome everyone.

I think we are good to go.

Um, so good afternoon, and welcome to the second FY27 executive budget hearing for the day.

Focus on the Department of Education.

I'm Council Member Linda Lee, and I'm pleased to be joined by my colleague, uh, Councilmember Eric Dinowitz, who is the chair of the committee on education.

And we have been joined by our speaker Julie Menon, Deputy Speaker Williams, Council Members Lewis, Brewer, Wong, Morano, Felder, Hudson, Russler, Farias, Joseph, Maloney, and Shulman.

Who are we sure Felder?

Okay.

And Councilmember, oh, Councilmember Delarosa and did I say Melee?

I saw her earlier.

Councilmember Amelia, just in case.

Okay.

Um, so welcome, Chancellor Kamar Samuels, and thank you all for joining us today to answer our questions.

Um, special shout out to Daniel Junta, sorry, and Deputy Chancellor Fodi.

Sorry, all of you guys, okay, also.

Okay.

Uh, now I'm gonna get myself in trouble.

Um, on May 12, 2026, the administration released the executive financial plan for FY26 to 30, uh, with approved FY27 budget of 124.7 billion dollars.

DOE's proposed fiscal 2027 budget of 37.9 billion represents uh 30.5% of the administration's proposed FY27 budget in the executive plan.

This is a decrease of 105.8 million or 0.3% from the $37.6 billion originally budgeted in the FY27 preliminary plan.

This decrease results from several actions, mostly a 922.2 million dollar savings plan, which is offset by increased funding to restore learning to work and early childhood and education outreach, as well as expansions of every child and family is known, special education pre-K and teacher recruitment efforts.

As of April 2026, DOE's pedagogical headcount was 2,936 less than their fiscal 26 budgeted headcount, while their non-pedagogical headcount was 890 more than budgeted.

In the council's preliminary budget response, we called on the mayor to add 64.6 million to DOE to invest in one-time funded educational programs such as learning to work, the mental health continuum, please.

I'm making a plug for that, um, and immigrant family engagement and outreach.

We were pleased to see that two programs, learning to work and early childhood education outreach were included in the plan.

Um, and we are hoping that the majority of the one-time funded programs will be included in the future for before we adopt.

During my time as chair of the community on mental health, I consistently fought for a mental health continuum to be added and baseline.

And this plan does not include the $5 million for this crucial program that brings together the DOE, HH, and DOHMH to support students with significant mental health needs at 50 high schools, high needs high schools.

Sorry, high needs schools.

Um the funding has continually been added for one year only, which creates instability as we know and uncertainty when it comes to planning around the program's future, despite its positive impact on students.

So today we urge the administration to invest in this program to support the mental health needs of students at high needs schools.

Um, and now I will turn it over to our speaker for her opening statement.

Thank you so much, Shirley.

Good morning, Chancellor, good morning, uh, first deputy chancellor, and your entire team.

Today we will, of course, as the chair said, be discussing the Department of Education's executive budget for fiscal 2027.

The executive plan includes significant investments in our education system as a shared priority between the council and the mayor.

We are happy to see investments in early childhood education, programming for students with disabilities and learning to work, among many other crucial services included in the most recent plan.

The executive plan includes an additional $81.5 million in fiscal 2027 for early childhood education on top of the hundreds of millions of dollars included in the preliminary plan.

These investments are critical as we work towards a universal child care system.

We are also pleased to see funding to increase contract rates for ECE providers who have not seen an increase since 2022, despite rising operating costs.

Notably, these rate increases do not provide pay parity for the ECE workforce, whose wages vary greatly across sites, experience, and union affiliation.

For a strong ECE system, we need a strong workforce behind it.

The council is ready to work with the DOE to improve recruitment and retention of ECE educators, including increased wages for workers.

While the executive plan includes new investments in the education system, it also includes a savings plan of 922.2 million and fiscal 2027.

This savings plan heavily relies on cost containment strategies for class size and due process cases.

The plan recognizes the savings of 149 million for due process cases coupled with investments in pre-K special education, as well as services for students in non-public schools.

The council appreciates the due process briefing that you provided last week, and we just want to say that this is in stark contrast to what we feel is a lack of transparency on DOE contracting, which is something we're gonna focus on.

We look forward to discussing the savings plan with the DOE and better understanding how the DOE will realize these savings next school year.

Additionally, the savings plan includes multiple savings and contract spending, most notably $30.3 million for procurement reform as called for in the council's fiscal 2027 preliminary budget response.

While the council is pleased to see an effort from the DOE to reform the DOE's 12.8 billion dollar contract budget, there is a concerning lack of transparency in this spending.

The council has continually called on the DOE to provide more details on their contract budget, especially the procurement method.

However, these calls have largely remain unanswered.

DOE's initial response to the council's preliminary budget follow-up on DOE contracts was, quote, this is being reviewed, and we will get back to the council, end quote.

A response that was provided um uh weeks after our request.

OMB's response similarly avoided answering the council's questions about DOE contracts, uh, suggesting that DOE would separately follow up with specific information.

While the DOE did share some information on DOE contracts with the council just late last week, the lack of transparency on DOE contract spending, a significant portion of not only DOE's budget but the whole citywide budget is very concerning.

The council continues to seek additional information to fully evaluate the procurement methods, scope, purpose, and cost of DOE contracts.

So we very much look forward to robust discussion today on DOE's contracts and savings plan.

I will now pass it back to Chair Lee.

Great, and I will pass it to Chair Dinowitz for his opening.

Thank you, Speaker.

Thank you, Chair Lee.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the fiscal twenty twenty-seven executive budget hearing for the Committee on Education joint with the Committee on Finance.

My name is Eric Dinowitz.

I'm the chair of the Committee on Education.

I'm honored to be here as a proud DOE public school alum and a forever educator.

Today will be discussing the Department of Education's 37.92 billion fiscal 2027 budget as presented in the executive financial plan.

Thank you to Chancellor Samuels and your team for joining us today.

The DOE has the largest budget among all city agencies, around one-third of the city's overall fiscal 2027 budget.

It also has the largest headcount among city agencies with 141,414 budgeted positions, 46% of the entire city's budgeted headcount.

As chair of this committee, I will continue to push for accountability and efficiency and transparency.

The budget for the largest school system in the country should reflect the needs and interests of its students, its educators, its faculty, and its families.

The executive plan includes major investments in programming for students with disabilities and district 79 students, as well as the expansion of New York City Reads and SOLVS, which provides standardized curriculum.

I'm particularly happy to see the inclusion of learning to work and early childhood education outreach funding, both of which were called for in the council's fiscal 2027 preliminary budget response.

However, there are multiple council priorities that were not funded in the executive plan.

Restorative justice is funded at only half of its current budget in fiscal 2027.

Many mental health clinics are in jeopardy of closing because of the gap in mental health continuum funding.

Student success centers face an uncertain future.

Funding for immigrant family engagement is missing from this plan, despite being critically important given the current climate for immigrant communities.

All these services and programs are facing funding cliffs because they were not funded in the executive plan, and both I and the council will continue to push for these programs.

Between prelim and exec, the plan also includes two major programs for students with disabilities through an additional 137.5 million dollars for pre-K special education and $86 million for IESP support for students with disabilities in non-public schools.

However, beyond a small expansion of district 75 classes in the Prelim plan, this budget does not include any additional special education support for grades K through 12.

With a financial plan that hopes to reduce due process case spending by 149 million dollars, it is disappointing to see that there was no expansion of DOE's wildly popular K through 12 programs for students with autism.

NEST, Horizon, and Ames.

DOE reports getting thousands of applications for these programs, though they are only able to offer a few hundred seats.

These programs are not only popular but effective, producing high graduation rates, yet they remain elusive for many students and families.

The executive plan also does not fill a funding gap for sensory exploration education and discovery, or seed programming for students with autism.

The DOE must expand support for students with disabilities across the entire school system, including training for teachers in general education classes.

When we set our teachers up for success, they can address the needs of all of our students.

In a due process briefing that the DOE shared with me and the council staff last week, it's clear that DOE is taking these escalating costs seriously.

Not only is due process spending a huge financial burden for the city, it all it also does not always solve the important underlying goal, which is getting students with disabilities their much needed services right here in our public school system.

We're glad to see that the DOE is making progress on curbing costs and look forward to further discussing how they will realize the 149 million dollars in savings the executive plan recognizes starting in fiscal 2027.

However, truly tackling due process case costs is going to require greater investment in K-12 special education.

It's what's best for the city, and it's what's best for our students.

While the plan includes investments in many areas, it also falls short on school safety and restorative justice programming.

School safety agents and restorative justice, while often pitted against each other in policy debates are complementary investments.

Both make our students and school communities safe.

Yet both are cut in the executive plan.

The DOE saving plan includes a vacancy reduction of 264 school safety agents, meaning that schools would not be able to fully staff SSAs if desired.

Additionally, restorative justice programming faces a six million dollar cut.

If you are a person who views these two things as not complementary, as as in opposition, wherever you fall on that debate between asking for more school safety officers or transitioning completely to restorative justice, there is a reason to be concerned.

Both SSAs and restorative justice must be fully funded to keep our students, our teachers and families safe across the system.

While the administration and the DOE strive to meet universal programming across ECE, New York City Reads and Solves, and other supports, I want to emphasize inclusion and efficacy.

Programs are only universal if everyone can participate fully and meaningfully.

I look forward to hearing more from the DOE on how they will ensure that 2K students will be identified for early intervention services.

I'm interested in learning more about the expansion of New York City Reads and Solves.

DUE should use this expansion to promote cultural compensation competency and develop teachers' capacity to lead professional development for their colleagues on these curricula.

And in the wake of yet another school bus contract extension, I look forward to a discussion on how DOE will ensure students in temporary housing and foster care get to school despite relying on decades old school bus contracts that do not adequately consider their needs.

As the DOE reconfigures its class size plan with a two-year extension for full compliance, the city needs to not only invest in teacher recruitment, which increases by 17 million in fiscal 2027 in this plan, but also on teacher retention.

While most of DOE's savings rely on the state's extension for classes implementation, there are still many outstanding questions on the DOE's new class-sized plan and expectations for the 2026-27 school year.

DOE must get to 100% class-sized compliance in a way that is equitable.

We cannot prioritize funding for schools that need help reaching compliance at the expense of schools that meet the class size mandate mandate but have other needs.

It is the council's responsibility to ensure that the city's budget is fair, transparent, and accountable to all New Yorkers.

It is essential that the budget that we adopt this year is also reflective of the priorities and interests of the council and the people that we represent.

This hearing is a vital part of this process, and I expect that the DOE will be responsive to the questions and concerns of council members.

I look forward to active engagement with the administration over the next few months to ensure the fiscal 2027 adopted budget meets the goals the council has set out.

I would also like to take a moment to thank my chief of staff, Jenna Klaus, Theo Salter, my legislative and budget director, Andrew Lane Lawless and Grace Amato, the committee's financial analysts, Alejandro Carvajal, the committee's council, and Chloe Rivera and Katie Salina, the committee's policy analysts.

And I now turn it back to Chair Lee.

Great.

Okay, we've also been joined by Councilmembers Brooks Powers and Juang.

And before we pass it off to the Chancellor and his team for swearing in, I have to do this PSA announcement that I've been doing at every before every hearing, which is that our public testimony, because I see a lot of our community advocates and leaders in the audience, we're doing public testimony on one full awesome day on Wednesday, January, uh January June 10th.

That's how my brain is.

Uh Wednesday, June 10th, this Wednesday, starting at 9:30 in the morning.

So please make sure to sign up for public testimony if you have not done so.

We will try to make it as amazing and entertaining as possible.

So, um, with that, I'm going to hand it off to our amazing committee counsel uh Brian Sarfo to swear you all in.

Good afternoon.

Do your firm to tell the truth, the whole truth or nothing but the truth before this committee and respond honestly to council member questions.

Chancellor Samuels.

First, Deputy Chancellor Gwinter.

I do.

CFO Scott.

I do.

Deputy Chancellor Hawkins.

I do.

Deputy Chancellor Folti.

Deputy Chancellor Pueblo Burgomo.

I do.

And Deputy Chancellor Moran.

I do.

You may begin.

Good afternoon, Speaker Menon.

You should have to push the button.

Check.

Great.

Good afternoon, Speaker Menon, Education Chair Dinowitz, Finance Chair Lee, Early Childhood Chair Gutierrez, the Committee Committee on Education and Finance, and the Subcommittee on Early Childhood Education.

Thank you for inviting me to testify on the fiscal year 2027 executive budget.

I am New York City Public Schools Chancellor Kamari Samuels, and I am joined by my first Deputy Chancellor Daniel Genta, Chief Financial Officer Sarita Scott, and other members of my senior leadership team.

The mayor's FY 2027 executive budget for NYC public schools, which totals 44.9 billion dollars, will both sustain and sustain critical programming and enable us to enact a new vision for our schools.

One shaped directly by our communities and aligned to the administration's plans for a vibrant, equitable, and affordable New York City.

Since my last testimony, I have continued to engage deeply with our students, families, and staff.

I visited schools in all 45 superintendents' districts and completed a 10-stop Chancellor Conversation Tour.

Once we soon we will publish a report detailing what we heard on that tour and how those insights will inform our work.

We've gathered extensive community feedback on high-priority topics such as AI, held listening sessions specifically with students and families residing in shelters and more.

These conversations have continued to shape my educational vision, one focused on safety, academic rigor, and true integration with a consistent through line of family empowerment.

And I am proud to share that we are already hitting the ground running.

We are launching 2K and expanding 3K, both incredibly exciting milestones towards universal child care and a more livable city.

We are opening five new schools in the Bronx and Queens, offering unique high-quality models focused on the arts, STEM, and more.

We are growing New York City Reads and Solves, including bringing New York City Solves to elementary schools where many math habits and mindsets are formed.

We have released our first ever bus vendor scorecards to strengthen transparency and accountability around school transportation.

We have published a know your rights comic book to teach immigrant students, all and all students about their legal rights.

And we have hosted new celebrations to uplift communities from uh New York State Seat of Bioliteracy convocation to our recently concluded parent coordinator appreciation week.

This is just a start, and I'm eager to continue listening and partnering as we advance our vision.

The Mayor's FY 2027 executive budget also furthers this vision, investing deeply in the next generation of New Yorkers.

That starts with a focus on our most vulnerable, including our students in temporary housing.

This budget will expand support, resources, and access to caring adults via every child and family is known.

Thanks to a $7.2 million investment in FY2027 that grows to 10 million in FY30.

This will work.

This work will promote attendance, physical and emotional safety, mental health, and a sense of belonging.

The executive budget also invests in our youngest.

The administration's commitment to early childhood, $81 million annually, is momentous and game-changing.

This is especially true for our students with disabilities.

In addition to the overall early childhood investment, the administration has committed $67.5 million, growing to $82 million by FY 30 to expanding special education pre-K.

This investment gives our students with disability a strong disabilities, a strong start, fosters true integration, and allows us to better serve them within NYC public schools.

Additionally, this budget bolsters rigorous academics via New York City Reads and Solves with a $17.3 million investment that will transform reading instruction for an additional $104,000 students and math instruction for an additional $102,000 students.

This funding includes $6 million to improve culturally responsive practices for teacher preparation, building on this council's support for the Black Studies curriculum, the Latin Ad curriculum, and the hidden voices resources.

We are bringing high-quality, truly integrated instruction to classrooms across our city.

Our focus on student support extends the college and career pathways as well.

In partnership with community providers, we are preparing overaged and underaccredited students for economic mobility through learning to work, which will now be funded with an additional 31 million dollars in baseline funding.

I also want to address a topic that I know is on many principals' minds, holds harmless.

Providing schools with stability and predictability is a top priority, and to that end, we are as we prepare to allocate schools' initial budgets, which will be released next week's schools will continue to be held harmless.

As I mentioned, engagement is a critical function of my vision, and I look forward to opportunities to engage schools, communities, this council, and others about how our school budgets work to ensure that long-term fiscal stability and comprehensive support is available.

And finally, this budget also reinforces the essential operations that on the GERD our programmatic priorities and keep our 1600 schools open, safe and running smoothly with over 390 million dollars in baseline funding towards IT, school cleaning, leases, utilities, and facility maintenance.

While we are extremely grateful for these tremendous investments, I am proud to say that this budget does not only invest, it also saves.

In line with the mayor's Executive Order 12, the FY27 executive budget advances a comprehensive savings strategy that streamlines work efforts, strengthens fiscal discipline, and better aligns resources with students' needs, together generating significant savings of nearly one billion dollars in FY27.

Today, I'd also like to speak to budgetary and legislative decisions from the state that impact NYCPS on foundation aid.

We deeply appreciate the increase in L weights and new weight for students in temporary housing and foster care.

We will continue to advocate and partner with the state for further changes to the formula, including a regional cost index increase and an increase, increased weight for students with disabilities.

On class size, the extension of the implementation timeline will also will allow us to execute our capital and hiring strategies sustainably and with fidelity, building on the progress we've made since my last testimony.

Specifically, we've worked shoulder to shoulder with SCA to create a multi-year plan for all schools with class size-related space needs.

This work, which strategically blends capital and non-capital strategies, will be detailed in the class size reduction plan, which will be released next week.

Additionally, we are continuing to bolster staff to meet the mandate.

This includes allocating funding to hire more teachers and investing nearly 17 million dollars in FY 2027 for teacher recruitment, enabling us to expand programs like New York City Teaching Fellows, the same pathway I took to become an educator.

I also want to thank the Senate for its extent, the state for its extension of mayoral control, an essential ingredient for equitable transformation, transformative leadership of our schools.

But let me be clear the other critical component is family partnership.

The mayor's executive budget reflects reflects that with 3.2 million dollars allocated to FY 2027 towards family empowerment initiatives.

Engagement is core to who I am as a leader, and I believe mayoral control and local decision making are both vital to effective governance, and must be must complement each other here in New York City.

I want to thank this council for your continued partnership and support of our schools.

I've had the privilege of meeting so many of you and seeing you at schools and community events.

Your dedication is making a positive impact every single day.

Thank you all for your commitment to young people, and I look forward to answering your questions.

Thank you.

Great, thank you.

Passing it off to Speaker Minon to ask her questions.

Okay, thank you so much, Chancer.

So I've got a number of questions, and I know my colleagues do as well.

So thank you very much for your testimony.

So I want to begin with some questions around contracts.

So since we had the first preliminary budget hearing in March, the council has repeatedly requested additional information about DOE contract spending, as you know.

We didn't receive a reply to our questions until late last week, and the limited analysis that DOE provided was very short on detail and not responsive to all the quet the questions that the council had.

So my first question is why is it taking so long for the council to get answers on this?

And when can the council expect answers to our remaining questions about the contracts?

First of all, thank you so much for this question, and I deeply understand and hear your first frustration.

So the initial read of the question was, you know, we were looking at what it would take to supply, you know, six more than 600 contracts in detail to the council.

It was um initially set up as a very laborious process that you know our team was uh looking into and didn't necessarily have the resources to get to right away.

So I'm gonna turn it over to um Alicia Ba to talk a little bit more about that, and then I'll come back to actually talk about um some of the plans we have going forward.

Thank you, Chancellor, and good morning, Speaker.

Um, so as the chancellor stated, um I think there were uh about 600 plus contracts that were requested, and um each of those contracts are like hundreds of pages long.

Um and the challenge that we have in a very resource constrained environment is that it would require a dedicated resource, it would take months for us to pull it because we're pulling it from a secure system that very few people have access to.

So, as an alternative, we offer it up to uh provide requests for authorizations because they they are pretty much a concise summarization of each of the contracts.

It includes um the pertinent contract terms, including the contract value, and we were hoping that the council would accept that and choose a subset of those dose of contracts from that that we could pull and we would be able to turn it around much quickly.

I mean, I just find this troubling that of the 600, we're not asking for a printed copy, we're asking for a file of the contracts.

I mean, this should take like an hour of work to do, and it's it's been since March that we've asked this to get a copy of the like an online file that has the contracts in it.

This should not, I mean, I just find it astounding that this has taken months and that we still don't have these answers.

Um I completely understand, but it it actually does take.

We have to download the contracts from a secure system, and not very many people have access to that system, so it wouldn't take hours, it would actually take months.

But the fact that not a lot of people have access to the system in and of itself also raises a concern.

As I mentioned in the March hearing, I asked if there had been any auditing of these contracts, and I know your response was there had not.

And that that is, I guess, what is concerning me.

That is why it's very hard for us to do our charter mandated oversight function if you know we can't even have access to this data.

Yeah, and one of the things that I am completely committed to doing as we've um offered is really making sure that we have consistent briefings with with you on this and rolling over time so that we can do um sections of the the the big ask that you have, and that's where I I am committed to ensuring that we have an ongoing conversation, that we have a rolling conversation with um all of the the eventually all of the data that you've requested, and and that's in addition to the briefing that we uh offered earlier.

Okay, I'm with all due respect, Chancellor.

I I think you know, we're not interested sort of in the rolling conversation.

We're asked specifically asking for the contract data, which numerous councils have asked for data about other contracts in the past.

This is not you know some kind of new idea.

This is again basic rudimentary data that DOE should be providing to the council, and I'm not sure why we're getting stonewalled.

Well, I I can assure you we're we're not stolewalling.

I think that uh as you said, we did provide um more recently uh a summary of a lot of the the terms of those contracts, and if that doesn't suffice, we'll definitely and it sounds like it does.

It does not suffice.

I mean, again, we're asking as we asked in March for the contracts.

I don't think this is in no way unreasonable.

This is a very reasonable ask, and it's just concerning that we're not getting this data.

We don't want a summary of what the terms say, we actually want the contracts.

Okay, so yeah, thank you.

Okay, thank you very much.

So DOE's contract budget, as you know, totals 12.9 billion dollars.

Uh and that's one of the reasons why we're interested in this.

It's a very significant number.

So we want to be able to see some of these contracts so we can understand what is happening.

We know that 3.7 billion in contract spending for charter schools, 1.4 billion in contract spending for due process cases.

The council analysis of fiscal 2025 doe contract spending from checkbook suggests that at least 40% of contract spending was through non-competitively non-competitively bid contracts.

So we know that checkbook is not a one-to-one comparison, of course, with DOE's contract budget, but this analysis was limited to contract spending for which the procurement method was available.

Uh, the council's estimate of 40% differs significantly from DOE's report to the council late last week, where which indicated only 10% of contract spending is through contracts that are not competitively bid, and only 12% of contracts are not competitively bid.

So, how do you explain this large discrepancy?

Um, so I'll address I believe it was 12% that we had reported, and I'll address that.

When I had uh reported that at the last hearing, I was only referencing the that it was 12% of the total contracts, and I wasn't necessarily addressing uh contract spend.

So uh without seeing the data that uh was pulled from checkbook, I'm unable to really assess whether or not that 40% I'm sorry, I'm not understanding the distinction between the 40% that the council's finding from checkbook versus a 12% that you have forty percent of spend or 40% of the contracts.

So the the uh contract spending.

So you're saying your 12% figure.

It was related to the actual contracts, number of contracts.

Got it.

Okay.

Could we get then the contract spend number?

Because that is so we have an apples to apples comparison.

Okay, and could we please get that by you know in the next couple days?

We'd like to see it.

We don't want to we want to get that information expeditiously.

Yes.

Um the fundamental question is why is some contract spending that is clearly not competitively bid um not included in the DOE's accounting?

So the 13 billion that you uh quoted, it does include, as you stated, due process cases in uh charter schools, but those uh in both of those areas, they don't actually go through our procurement process, and so what we tend to do is just parse it out because those are uh state and federal mandates that we have to meet.

Okay, the council's analysis of checkbook data found that in fiscal 2025 another 21% of contract spending came from contracts that were renewed, again, considering only contracts for which there was data on the procurement method.

Does GUE track the portion of renewal contract spending that is competitively bid?

Sorry, can you repeat that question?

Does DUE track the portion of renewal contract spending that is competitively bid?

Uh I don't necessarily know that I report out on it, but we do keep track of it.

Yes.

Okay.

Can you also then provide to the committee this data?

So you want spent you want spend on contract renewals?

Yes.

Exactly.

Okay.

Exactly.

I want to move on to New Visions portal contract.

The saving plan includes a reduction of $8.9 million in fiscal 2027 and the out years for contract reduction.

We have heard that this cut is targeting the New Visions data portal.

Former Chancellor Ross Porter wrote an impassioned op-ed that I assume you probably saw about the value of the New Visions data portal in schools, which integrates data across agencies in support of student planning, program management, and analytics.

So council would obviously be extremely disappointed if this contract was cut next year.

Can you confirm if this savings is cutting the contract for the new visions portal?

Yeah, so I can confirm that that was uh the recommendation on behalf of the cost savings uh the cost savings uh team.

And I will say that we have since had significant conversations across agencies and as well as with new visions to really think about opportunities for moving forward in a way that would be sustainable, that is not necessarily um that would be advantageous for first of all to us because despite the fact that it's used across agency, all of the cost sits with um DOE.

And so and and so we want to have a conversation with the with the vendor as well as with our agency partners about how to move forward, and we're involved in those discussions, and we're we're we're we're hopeful that we we can get to something that doesn't involve the disruption of the service.

So I take so then can the council know that it's no, it will not be cut or I we're not exactly there at no it not will not be cut, but we are having significant conversations.

I will tell you that I I value the new vision new visions portal, many around um certain DOE do uh do value the the new visions portal.

One of the the reasons that um it was um put up as an as a potentially duplicative um resource is because um it's used by administrators in schools, it's used by central, but not necessarily as much by teachers in schools, but but I we recognize the the um the great utility of the new visions portal.

Okay.

Moving to pay parity for early childhood education workers, what is the average salary and working hours for the ECE workforce by setting, including contracted home base providers, contracted CBO providers, um, and NYCPS run programs.

Yeah.

First of all, thank you for the question.

We recognize the need in this area, the great um need for uh ensuring that our some of our most vulnerable um employees are are made uh that that paid priority is moving, it's a really important issue, and so I'm gonna turn it over to um Deputy Chancellor Hawkins to talk a little bit more about this.

Thank you, Chancellor.

Thank you, Speaker.

Um so we're working really closely with the mayor's office of child care and early childhood education, speaker, to get that data set.

I want to be clear that there is a subset of the provider universe that lives within and partners with New York City Public Schools.

We do not manage the full gamut, and so to understand what that average true cost is across the settings, uh, we are working with the mayor's office.

What we can say, there is it does vary to your point, right?

And so we have a subset of a provider base that are contracted and center-based programs.

Those that are uh unionized with DC 37, they have one rate.

Those that are non-union have a different rate.

Um, and then our colleagues in New York City Public Schools working in district schools have a separate rate uh of pay, which is dictated by the UFT collective bargaining agreement.

The hours vary across these settings, so I can't give you the average.

Um, but we are going to work to provide more uh centralized data at some point.

I want to also reinforce that we are in full support of compensation parity, going beyond that of pay, but understanding that some of our provider partners don't even have you know select insurances to support uh their fringe rate, and so we are in active discussions with the mayor's office.

I'm very concerned about the collection.

This data has to be collected.

I mean, we have to understand this issue because if we ever want to get to universal child care, and this council has worked for years, we passed a whole package of bills back in 2022 mandating universal child care.

So this, you know, is not a new issue for us.

We've been hammering on this issue of pay parity for many, many years.

So I'm concerned that we don't have that DOA doesn't have that data.

Do you intend to collect data either through a survey, the contracting process, perhaps in partnership with agencies such as DOHMH and others?

So again, we agree, Speaker, but that data would not live with New York City public schools because we are talking about the entire system of early care and education.

And so we are very excited that the mayor's office of child care and early childhood education is really interested in leading this effort.

So, yes, we will be pursuing that data.

Okay.

Um I'm gonna ask on two other topics and then turn it over to my colleagues, and I'll come back on the second round.

So, Chancellor, thank you for coming to our 529 conference for NYC Kids Rise and for what you've done as superintendent in districts 13 and 3 to support the program.

Uh, we believe it is so important to expand upon this program, and we want to understand what can DOE do to better support schools to work with families to view and activate their uh and um New York City Kids' Rise accounts.

Thank you, Speaker Manon.

And as you you know, um the last five months have been the largest uh increase in activation uh in our New York City Rise accounts uh in in the records that they keep.

And so I am committed to the program, and we've done significant work with our superintendents and work with um our partners at Kids Rise to ensure that our schools are continuing to uh give this the necessary resources to parents that they need to be able to sign up and activate their accounts specifically in our most uh marginalized populations.

So we are we we are absolutely working on that and committed to doing that.

Okay.

Um, I want to shift gears.

Um, it was reported last week that former district three deputy superintendent Mariella Graham Graham split contracts for the same vendor to bypass the typical financial oversight of the contracts.

The contract with this vendor resulted in the placement of a former DOE employee with substantiated charges of sexual misconduct in the Manhattan School.

So this incident, of course, raises concern that there may be more widespread practice of contracts being broken up to avoid appropriate spending scrutiny.

And in fact, as CI's report on the matter noted that schools are systemically plagued by vendor check splitting and other procurement problems.

The report concluded, quote, violations of procurement rules often resulted in financial losses to the DOE, led to state and federal prosecutions, andor prevented the DOE from working with the most qualified vendors at fair market prices.

Can you describe DOE's typical procurement protocols and how that differs for contracts over and under 25,000?

Yeah.

Thank you for the question.

I want to address the the specifics of the specific question you raise.

And you know, I have devoted my career to expanding opportunities for young people across the city.

I've you know, I want to focus on building a public school system for families that does not sacrifice uh the education of our children for bureaucracy.

But having said that, I do regret the lapses in in policy and procedures that took place when I was a superintendent in district three.

Um the actions and questions were undertaken in pursuit of educational opportunity for children, not for personal gain, and um benefited uh other benefited no one other than uh children in the district.

While our current system in NYC public schools tries to strike a balance between, you know, system-wide purchasing and ensuring that schools and districts have a level of autonomy to get to day-to-day transactions as well as their vision.

Um we have a lot, we have a critical need to strengthen and improve uh purchasing practices across our system.

And as our chancellor, I um, you know, this is something I'm really going to be deeply focused on.

I'm working to make sure that it's easier to truly deliver for students with training and oversight that is enhanced but supportive, not impetitive.

And so I want to really turn it over to um Alicia to talk a little bit more about the procurement process on the 25th closed.

Good morning, Alicia Belowy.

I forgot to state that earlier.

Um, so um as the chancellor stated that you know um schools have autonomy because um you know it's it's seen as a way to allow schools to get the goods and services that they need as quickly as possible.

Um, and so with that, schools uh have uh they're allotted a um uh what we would call non-contractual spend threshold of $15,000 uh for goods and $25,000 for services with an individual vendor, be it all that they follow the proper uh standard operating procedures for purchasing.

For any spend above that 2015 and 25,000 cap, there are specific types of procurement methods that they're supposed to initiate when they know that they have a need for a good or service.

So I would say at the simplest form, they up to a hundred thousand dollars schools are allowed to initiate what we call a simplified procurement process, and it's probably the simplest and the fastest.

It doesn't require going to PEP, it also doesn't require um controller registration.

Anything above that has to go through a formal procurement process, primarily um the preferred the f the preferred process would be a competitive bid, but we also have RFPs, we have negotiated services, we have multiple task award contracts, the multiple task award contracts are the contracts that are primarily used at the school level.

And what it does is it's a competitive process, but the it's when it's initiated and the and a vendor is awarded a contract, it's it they it serves as kind of like a pre-qualified list of vendors who can provide a good or service.

So a lot of times you'll see um contracts in that category that are for professional development for assessments and things of that nature.

Um schools also leverage what we call a listing application, which is essentially a sole source contract, and it's used for textbooks, educational software because those items are tend to be proprietary and you cannot purchase it anywhere else.

Um, once uh a procurement action is initiated by a program office, they work very closely with my team to go through all of the necessary steps and processes that are outlined in our procurement policy.

Um, so that would mean, you know, uh releasing the bid, that would mean uh receiving responses, analyzing those responses or evaluating them, uh, and then moving toward award.

Once the contract is awarded, then we go through uh another due diligence process where we're doing background checks to ensure that the vendor is responsible.

We uh all vendors are required to go through a um data privacy protocol and they have to sign data privacy agreements, and once they're done with that, then we present those contracts to the panel for educational policy.

We meet with the panel before um the actual panel vote to give them an overview of each of the contract items that they're going to vote on, and once you're done with that, once we're done with that, uh we hold the public panel meeting and they vote on it there.

Once it is approved by panel, or if it's not approved, we don't move forward with it.

But once it's approved by panel, we uh enter into the contracting stage.

Once we get to the contracting stage, that's kind of where additional negotiations uh occur.

And once we finalize that, then it gets submitted to the controller for registration.

Okay.

That's just Cliff Notes.

I mean, that's very Cliff Notes version of it.

Sure.

A couple questions on that.

You mentioned textbooks as an example.

Why would tech and you mentioned that they're proprietary?

Why would textbooks be a proprietary?

That seems kind of commonplace.

Why would they be proprietary?

Because you so oftentimes so textbooks are proprietary to the actual publisher, and oftentimes you can only purchase those items from the publisher, and that's the definition of a sole source.

If I can't purchase it anywhere else, but with that with that particular vendor, then that that's that's a sole source.

It's it's it's it's it's not competitive.

So then how does DOE ensure that the staff with the authority to sign contracts that are not competitively bid are not improperly splitting payments to avoid standard procurement protocols.

Repeat the question again, I'm sorry.

So it it goes into the uh questions that I was formerly asking the chancellor, which is how does DOE ensure that the staff or the authority to sign the contracts that aren't competitively bid aren't improperly splitting the payments to avoid the standard procurement process.

So I think you're referencing the non um procurement violations.

So I think so.

We provide training to staff that are who have the authority to initiate procurement actions.

Um in addition to that, we also have standard operating procedures.

Now, what I will say is that um, you know, clearly if these things are happening, then there's always room for improvement, and as a part of the procurement reform and initiative that's being that was recently launched at New York City Public Schools, we're looking at ways to strengthen and strengthen um auditing and oversight at the practices at the school level, and you know, in order to identify those inefficiencies, and we're also seeking to strengthen our training, um, primarily, you know, focusing on um ensuring that training is occurring on an annual basis and that it's certified, and also strengthening the training around what we deem as non-contractual purchasing.

In addition to that, we're also looking at ways to um modernize our procurement infrastructure, right?

Um, looking at ways um centralization and also uh making uh upgrades to our existing uh procurement technology.

So just building on what you just said, so there is currently an effort underway to review the existing procurement protocols.

You mentioned an annual training, but is there more that is being done to reform the procurement process to prevent these things from happening in the future?

Yes, we're we're we're in we're in the initiate uh the preliminary stages of developing that, yes.

But there is, you know, there is an actual procurement reform that is focused on these things too, increasing governance primarily at the school level, and we also think that centralizing the procurement function itself will increase transparency and and accountability and visibility.

Okay, so just in closing, I would just say you mentioned you're in the preliminary process of reviewing that.

I would like to to get an update on that, so an update to my office directly and to this committee on exactly what is happening to reform the process.

I have more questions, but want to pass it um over to our chairs now.

Great.

Um actually I had a I wanted to just piggyback off the speaker's questions on the procurement because I love talking about this topic.

Uh but um have you also looked at but I know it's a separate system than what Mox has with Passport and all that, right?

And um, have you gotten feedback from providers and different folks who maybe perhaps use both systems, right?

Who can then look at it and say, here's some best practices from either or that would actually help us to streamline things so that we're not spending so much time working on this.

I think that would be helpful to maybe go back to the community groups that use the system and try to get their feedback.

If you're in the preliminary stages, I'm just wondering what the input is from that side, we haven't gotten to that stage.

Okay, I mean, so right now we're really we're really invested in trying to find a replacement system.

Got it.

Um the way that uh Passport is configured to date, it's not really functional for our use.

Oh no, yeah, nor would I suggest you need to offense.

So we're engaged in conversations with um City Hall's innovation team and the mayor's Office of Contract Services to um develop a plan or a pathway for replacing our procurement system because I think that that's one of the biggest challenges, and it's one of the reasons why we don't have as much transparency and visibility as we would like.

So, right.

And um, yeah, the only reason why I suggest that is because I know that um oftentimes the providers are using both systems, and so I'd be curious to see what overlap there could be to streamline things.

And then also on that note, um, because I think you had mentioned if I heard you correctly that at some point, um, in terms of the RFP process, the the PEP needs to vote for it.

But before it gets to that point where they have to vote on it, I'm assuming, and correct me if I'm wrong, that they've already um gotten a download and have been prepped beforehand of the different groups that are part of so in other words, they're part of the process so that it's not a surprise, right?

Correct.

So we do hold briefings um at least one week prior to the actual panel session, and the actual agenda is posted publicly ten days before the actual meeting, so it gives them time to read through um the proposals and ask as many questions, and after we have the briefings, we often follow up with additional responses to questions that may arise during those meetings.

Okay, so one week before actually seems kind of a short time period before.

And the only reason why I'm saying that is because it seems like you all on your end have to go through all these arduous steps before you get to that point.

And so I'm just wondering if they could be if there could be that input beforehand, because then the last thing is like you have to go through this entire thing, and then what if they don't like the final bidders or whoever I completely understand what you're saying, but it I mean it takes it takes about a year for us to even get to the point where we can present it to panel, um, and we're generally scrambling.

But again, we're looking at ways to streamline our processes, so maybe it's something that there's something that we could incorporate that would allow us to do it, but I can't make that promise like right now.

No, I get it.

Um and why does it take so much longer versus other city agencies?

I mean, and just just to simply ask it that way.

Well, the in the end-to-end procurement process is relatively long, right?

Um, you know, releasing bids, awarding them, and then you know, oftentimes when we release a bid, um, we're rewarding we're awarding contracts to multiple vendors, and that in itself can take some time.

Um, so you have to ensure that once you know we award a contract, we've got to do um, we have to do negotiation on pricing.

We also have to do background checks, that can be pretty extensive, and then we have and and even and if something comes up in that background check process, we have to do our due diligence by going back and doing some investigation to ensure that when we deem a vendor responsible and responsive, that we've done all of the necessary, taken all of the necessary steps that to take that we were required to take to ensure that these vendors can actually work with our students and in our schools.

Right, and and I will say I think in terms of this plus the purchasing power that DOE has and the procurement process, I wonder if this is an area where AI technology can maybe play a part.

N understanding that legally, I get that there's certain mandated steps you need to take, but then maybe truncating the amount of time that it takes in between each step would be great to look at.

We would love to be able to leverage it, but we would have to make sure we're leveraging it responsibly.

Right, of course.

May I um first of all, General Council Vladik, I swear to tell the truth and all the things, um and I I just um thank you for letting me um add to this because my office has actually for a variety of reasons been um pretty deeply engaged in our procurement processes and uh school and district level purchasing over the last few years.

We've actually been doing kind of um a health assessment, so to speak, to see how um strong and robust our practices are in terms of protecting against fraud.

Um, but not only for that purpose, also for the purposes that you're identifying, which is to help communities understand better how our procurement process works, to level the playing field for vendors so that we're expanding opportunities for businesses around the city and organizations around the city to work with us to make sure that bad actor vendors who we may be able to identify but wouldn't necessarily be visible to a school are identified, referred where appropriate.

Um and so all of the um all of the things that that you and the speaker are pointing to are elements of this like very complex and vibrant ecosystem, and I think I I think I have a certain amount of pride in the core soundness of the apparatus given the size and scale of what we're doing, it is so complex um but at the same time just to echo the chancellor's point about trying to find that balance between efficiencies um oversight central visibility consistency across the system versus schools and districts knowing their individualized needs better than anyone else that is a uh balancing that requires constant adjustment and so all of the um reforms and oversight that you and the speaker and Alicia have referred to are all part of that great thank you um and also sorry we've been recognized joined by council member epstein who I forgot to mention you earlier sorry about that as well as council member Gutierrez and Marte um so I'm just gonna quickly shift to uh mental health uh both on the continuum um as well as the school based mental health clinics so what are your thoughts on the importance of extending funding for the mental health continuum and what would happen if the five million dollar funding is not restored which I know we talk about this every year but I love this program and I know you guys do too so wanted to know if you could speak to that oh well the the idea of mental health and what our young people need on that continuum is really critical and something that um as I've become chancellor it's even more profound as I see uh firsthand how our young people oftentimes are struggling and so um we are deeply committed to it we have resources that we've dedicated to mental health within our our system and I want to turn it over to uh deputy chancellor to talk a little bit more about this good afternoon chair lee and members of the councils who are here today um so we yes agree um and value city council commitments and partners to this work I want to emphasize again that this is a share this specific program is a shared support so it's a combination of uh resources that go into health and hospital the department of health and New York City public schools and only um a smaller percentage of the funding come to New York City public school because the clinical services are actually residing within um health and hospitals so we we believe we value the partnership we understand that our young people are navigating um challenges and make making sure that they get the help that they need quickly is critical and for those 50 schools that have benefited from this program not only have been able have we been able to onboard 16 um Article 31 clinics in addition to the other clinics that reside in New York City public schools servicing over 400 um schools in total and then actually that's a perfect segue to the school based mental health clinic question I had which is um you said 400 wait 400 schools was for the for the continuum for the overall for the over the continuum with support 50 schools 50 right primarily in um the South Bronze Browns bill and those uh 50 schools are supported in two ways for clinical support they're supported by the five um expansion of clinicians in some of the hospitals which are Lincoln Hospital Morrisania Kings County Woodhole and ETH New York so the students who didn't get access to the clinical support there we then embedded 16 schools um mental health clinics into the schools that's separate and apart from the other plethora of clinics that already exist within the school system awesome and then for the school based mental health clinics how many students have been served so far in FY26 um in terms of the continuous if that's what you're speaking to the the mental health um overall clinics are under my colleague here but the continuum itself uh we have a total um of two thousand three hundred and thirty served clinical services that have been provided this year.

And that includes a range.

Perfect.

And then for the school based mental health clinics, how many have been provided I don't I don't know um we can look into that.

How that's tracked.

What I can say is that out of the 250 clinics that we have in the DOE, they service approximately 400 schools and around 180,000 students.

That's in addition to our social worker and our school counselors that are also part of our ecosystem of mental health and wellness support because I do want to echo that those services are there in a tier.

Not every student will necessarily need a clinical intervention, but when needed, we have I think a very robust footprint, and we need to continue to do more so that our parents know all of the supports that exist within the system and children are getting those direct services from our schools.

Great.

And then which services, because I know the at least for the school-based mental health clinics, they're mostly Medicaid reimbursement.

And so what are the services that are not covered by that program?

I mean, sorry, well, I mean, that are not that are not covered under the Medicaid funding.

What are the clinical services that are not covered under the Medicaid funding?

Sorry, let me re ask.

So uh the school-based mental health clinic services are excluded.

Um, and how many wait excluded from the Medicaid reimbursement?

But that's with the Article 31s, right?

Correct.

Okay, so the Article 31s get the reimbursement, and what's the gap, if any, for um services in the school based mental health clinics that maybe are not covered by the reimbursement?

See, we can get back to you on the specific questions about the the reimbursement, but I do want to emphasize that because we also have an ecosystem of social workers across our school system that are working in house, that's another layer of support uh that can get done.

And if you want more specific nuances about the reimbursement, we can definitely um get back to you on that.

Okay, perfect, especially with um a lot of the Medicaid cuts coming down the line.

Um for the savings plan, um, how many of the 97 filled central pedagogical positions are affected, and which divisions are impacted or excluded?

Uh, which initiative are you uh referencing?

Sorry, uh well, I mean, uh, based on the savings plan, hold on, let me just bring up more detailed question.

So, there, hold on, let me just read this whole oh.

Which one you looking up as well?

Yeah.

Of vacancy reductions, okay.

Okay, okay, yeah.

So actually, let me just go through this.

Um, the executive plan includes 922.2 million.

Um, correct me if I'm wrong, savings plan in FY27, uh, which grows in the out years, and the majority of the savings plan relies on cost containments in class size due to and due process cases.

Um, so the remainder of savings are focused on contract reform, OTPS spending reduction, and other spending efficiencies.

So, out of this large savings plan, which items were identified by the chief savings officer, and were any of these savings identified by OMB?

Um, how did DOE and OMB work together on the savings plan?

Right.

So all savings proposals were submitted by New York City public schools in collaboration uh with City Hall and OMB.

Okay, and they were all accepted by OMB.

Uh, yes.

Okay.

Well, the ones that may obviously made it into the executive budget.

Um, and there's a two million dollar savings for reduction in central headcount, uh, which would move some pedagogical positions out of central administration positions into unfilled school-based positions.

So, according to DOE data, there are currently this is what I meant, sorry.

So, according to DOE data, there are currently 97 filled pedagogical positions in central across multiple divisions.

So, how many of these positions is DOE planning to move and eliminate?

Yes, thank you for the question.

Um, you know, that's one of our values is to make sure that we're we're really supporting schools in uh with with our um human resources, and that's uh getting closer and closer, ensuring that teachers and all of the pedagogues that we have are getting closer and closer to schools.

And so I think Michael, you might need to be sworn in, but I'm gonna turn it over to Michael Cheatham to um talk talk about it some more.

Good morning, Michael Cheatham.

So let us know the truth.

Thank you.

But yes, on the on the reduction, you're talking about the reduction of central staff, or are you talking about the access?

Who's want to clarify?

Because there's multiple.

Yeah, so according to the DOE data, there's currently 97 filled pedagogical positions in central across multiple divisions.

So, how many of these positions is DOE planning to move and eliminate?

Well, there's various titles.

So we're gonna just work with our program offices to achieve the savings uh the the target.

So you're saying 97 pedagogical positions, yeah.

Uh currently 97 filled pedagogical positions in central across multiple divisions.

I don't I'm not that's data that I'm not familiar with on that part.

Okay, so which divisions potentially could see a reduction in pedagogical head count?

Well, this is gonna be we're gonna work with the divisions across all teams to make sure that they identify.

It's gonna cross various titles, vacancies that haven't been filled for some time are gonna be the first ones that we prioritize.

Okay, so that hasn't been finalized yet.

The central budgets, we're working with our teams to when we roll it out for next fiscal year.

Okay, and I know that it is often helpful to have the pedagogical staff in DOE Central, which is something you guys were talking about, I think at the CEC uh meeting last time uh in our district, um, when crafting uh the programming for specific student populations.

So, how will do we ensure that the savings plan will not negatively impact that work?

So, uh throughout our process of looking through savings, even uh proposing and submitting them.

We wanted to make sure one of the key things that the Chancellor wanted to make sure was that there was no disruption to the schools whatsoever.

Okay, so no disruption to the programming services, great, okay, which is what we wanted to do.

Okay.

Um also the plan includes a vacancy reduction plan of which 17.8 million is cut in the school support UA, and this savings is associated with 197 civilian positions set to be uh cut from the school support.

So, what types of positions are being eliminated there?

I think this is going to the earlier question.

We're working with the program teams and across various titles, prioritizing uh positions that have been unfilled for some time, and working our way through that process.

Okay, right.

To be clear, these are positions that were never filled.

Or, yes, that's where we're prioritizing and starting to work through.

And then if you could um so this will not reduce the budgeted headcount for social workers, guidance counselors, or other similar positions, I guess.

The school basis.

No, no.

Okay.

Sorry.

Um, and what's the current vacancy rate for social workers and guidance counselors?

And are any of these vacant positions identified for the savings plan?

Uh we can get back to you on that number.

Okay.

Confirm that no none of the right, we can confirm that that's not a part of this uh savings plan to use guidance counselors and social workers in schools.

Perfect, okay.

Um and the FY27 budget includes 27.9 million uh reduction, which grows to 55.9 million in the out years due to transportation route efficiencies.

Um how is DOE planning to optimize transportation routes without disrupting service?

And which the council is constantly fighting to improve this came up in the last uh hearing as well.

So, uh so thank you for for this question.

When I think about our bus routes and our bus contracts, we, you know, we have obviously decades of contracts as uh the the the chair talked about.

We have over 9,000 routes that we that we do every day for 150,000 students.

That's this is something that I've um learned probably the most about this topic since becoming chancellor, and you know, thinking about the modernization that we need to do, how we make our book our our routes actually more efficient.

I'm gonna turn it over to Deputy Chancellor Kevin Moran to speak a little bit more about that.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Um wanna thank you very much for that question.

It was the modernization began here in this chamber uh in 2018 uh with a series of local laws.

Uh in 2019, it was local law 32, 33, and 34, mandating GPS and other pieces of information that were not one uh transparent uh and where we couldn't see accountabilities.

So over the past many years, we we implemented this modernization effort, one of which is actually having people log in uh every day when they drive the bus.

That's up to 95%.

So I want to thank our drivers across all our companies for logging in, whereas parents can see now in their New York City school bus app where their children are at any given time.

Um, and 900 bus routes this school year started what's known as ridership tracking, where students can actually badge on the yellow school bus and badge off, and then so we can determine time traveled.

What happens now this fall is we start our routing optimization, all predicated on our strides program, which is our modernization program that took all 39 legacy systems and put them into one system so we can actually do something with the data that we're collecting that wasn't spread across uh disparate systems.

So now for this September, we're actually gonna run for all of our what you call curb to school, which is door to door busing, where our students are going to get this new routing system.

It's our first modern effort to do the routing.

What that'll do is allow us to reduce routes and travel times.

Our students with IEPs are traveling 137% more time to get to school than their gen ed peers.

And so what we want the routing algorithms to do is to reduce time travel, find efficiencies.

Uh, but I think it's important to realize our standard operating procedures maybe not being adhered to at the school level that it relates to this specific issue.

Whereas by default, a student with transportation on their IEP is defaulted into the small uh smaller type bus settings rather than being exposed to a continuum of least restrictive environments.

And so students could get on a smaller bus at age four and graduate high school at 22 years old in the same small uh passenger bus.

So, what this effort is to do is introduce where appropriate and where where comfortable, uh, a more uh a less restrictive environment within traveling.

So that is ultimately cheaper.

Uh we do anticipate cost savings, um, and ultimately we believe it's the right thing to do.

Great, thank you.

Um, I have a bunch of questions on 2K 3K, which I'm gonna forego because I have a feeling a lot of my colleagues are gonna ask about 3K 2K programming.

So I will play cleanup at the end if there's any other questions that haven't been asked.

But um, I do want to just mention that it would be great if we could the as you mentioned, Chancellor, Deputy Chancellor.

Sorry, Deputy Chancellor.

Uh, the pay parity across all the different systems, and I also have a bill in the council about that versus the school-based and the CBO-based um 3K program.

So, whatever we can do to bring it as close to similar as possible would be great.

And then my last question is just on the Black Studies Latinidad and AAPI curriculum, which I know that this is, you know, been an effort over the last couple of years that the council has made.

Um, so over the last three fiscal years, uh, the council has invested a lot of money into the education uh equity action plan initiated in the black studies curriculum and DOE reports this curriculum is now in over 400 schools, and the curriculum has been fully developed.

Um, the council's funding supports work to update this living curriculum as well as professional development for educators.

So, um, how does DWE plan to support the expansion of the Black Studies Curriculum to additional schools?

And how many schools does DOE expect will be using the Black Studies Curriculum next school year?

Yeah, thank you so much for this question.

We are deeply committed to the Black Studies Curriculum, the Latin and I curriculum, AAPI curriculum, all of the uh hidden voices resources, and what we're where we are are doing now is ensuring that at the school at the superintendent and principal level that there is a pathway for seamless implementation.

And the person leading that initiative is uh sitting right next to me, first deputy chancellor Daniel Gentas, Daniel at the top, more specifically about how we're gonna make sure that that happens.

Good afternoon, and thank you for asking.

Uh, since our last uh time here for the preliminary budget, we've made a lot of progress um around the work that we're doing, getting our schools and our communities ready for a deeper implementation of these resources.

We discussed last time that we've had these resources, we've been building these resources over time, but we needed to get better at helping our schools, our district teams and our schools make strong connections so that they're an embedded fabric of the tier one curriculum and not just resources that were being used unevenly.

So we have spent the better part of spring um deeply involved in professional learning about the uh using these resources.

We have also selected some uh pilot districts to learn deeper about implementation with starting with five.

Uh they're coming to an end this month and growing to nine to launch next year.

One of the things that we've done that's really exciting, and this is uh, you know, more like hot off the press kind of example, is how we can use these resources against the districts' chosen tier one curriculum.

So an example uh that came out of um the work of the social studies team and the literacy teams at Central with the district teams and hitting our schools is for example um in um in grade four of the HMH module on uh what makes someone a hero.

Uh, they were able to bring in from our hidden voices the story of Sylvia Mendez and her family's fight for desegregation and use that to complement the curriculum and go deeper um to help, you know, children really understand heroism, standing up for rights and deepening um their engagement in the knowledge building curriculum with uh really strong historical figures.

And we've been seeing those kinds of stories, whether it's uh where we can literally intersect this resource right into the curriculum for ELA while also doing that with our social studies curriculum, the vast majority of that curriculum is our in-house passport curriculum.

Um and so uh we've also uh as part of um some of the outgrowths of when when Chancellor Samuels came in and the transition of the cabinet really did survey and talk with our superintendents about their the depth with which they were using these resources to help sort of drive these next steps that we are already seeing some outcomes from.

Yeah, and just to add uh this idea of how do you integrate New York City reads with the cultural responsive work that we're doing, um, in as a part of our implementation process for New York City Reads, we do have implementation checklists that we that that our superintendents uh use, and we are in we're infusing now the the black studies curriculum, the Latinidad curriculum when it comes and and hidden voices in that implementation checklist so that um superintendents have an option to be able to see what's happening in their schools and report on that.

Okay, that's actually good to know because I know part of the challenge is that it's opt-in, and so the question is how do we get as many principals to offer this curriculum to the students as possible?

So I it that's good to hear, and just in terms of whether or not um in terms of how much money would be needed to expand the program and how can the Latinidad and AAPI studies uh learn lessons in terms of how to get a lot of the schools to offer this programming.

Yeah, I think well, in terms of the funding that would be needed, we we we can get back to you on that.

But the the idea of how do you integrate uh and create an interdisciplinary approach to um a learning experiences for young people, and how do we put the wind beneath the wings around that happening?

I think that's a systemic uh responsibility for us working with our superintendents, working with our principals to create those um those experiences for young people.

And I think there is a desire and um uh uh a desire to actually do this work on behalf of uh on the part of our superintendents and I'm the part of our school as I think there we've heard um, if there's one uh criticism of New York City Reads is that we it's the the tier one curriculum is is really meant for vast number of people around the nation and and the desire for us to get curriculum that really connects with um young people in the classroom that is culturally responsive is one is is is an area that we're really serious about working towards.

Great.

Okay, I'm gonna pass it to Chair Dinowitz.

Thank you, Chairley, thank you, Chancellor.

Um, I have a few questions about a few different topics, but I want to start where speaker one of the things Speaker Menon brought up, uh, which is the stories that have come out recently about the the procurement in the contracts and Mariella Graham uh when you were superintendent.

Um, you know, of course I I I think you've shown time and again over the past few months your ability to confront an issue and say, hey, uh there were mistakes made, uh, but in it it's exactly what we want our students to do.

But we also want students and adults alike to be held accountable and know that moving forward changes are going to be made, and also look back to actually discuss like what actually happened.

Um this is the largest school, this is the largest school system in the country, this is the largest agency in the city, it's about a third of our budget.

Um, and parents throughout the city, like there's a deep level of trust, whether you're a parent or a taxpayer that we must have in our school system.

Um, you know, parents send their kids to school every day and trust that the teachers in the school system are gonna do right by their kids, and we pay taxes and we trust that those tax dollars are gonna go to where they need to go.

Um, so this is a question about accountability at the top, because it's critical that people are held accountable and that the culture of accountability is set from the very top because all the safeguards are all well and good, but they're meaningless unless they're instituted and demonstrated at the top.

And just to make sure everyone knows what we're talking about, the accordance, it's 386 million dollars in fiscal year 25, were from these individual contracts that were below 25 or 15,000, which don't hold the same scrutiny as those above their amount.

So that is a significant sum of money.

And over the years, SCI has uh done investigations, and this is all online for anyone to see about how people have circumvented uh these rules in order to be below that $25,000 mark.

Um, and so you know, in 2024, uh a principal knowingly approved multiple purchase orders below 25,000 dollars provided by two separate companies that had common ownership.

Um another principal circumvented the DOE bidding process by approving purchases separate into $5,000 increments for two vendors.

Uh, there was a min there are manipulations of bids, artificial competing bids, uh another principal circumvented DOE procurement policy, and then of course, in the case of Marielle Graham, we all saw the articles.

Um, as SCI said, violated several DCB rules by improperly entering into a non-bid negotiated services contract valued at 180,000 with a non-DOE contracted vendor for the purpose of circumventing DCB bid thresholds and Dewey's multiple task award contract processes.

Um so there's a lot of layers of this, but I first, if you could tell the committee and the public what your role was during that time.

Yeah, so look, I again I regret the lapses in policy and procedure that took place while I was the superintendent, and the actions in question were all meant to um in the pursuit of educational opportunity.

Chair Dinowitz, um I think you and I'm sure the committee can appreciate that when there is active speculation going on in the press about past investigations, prospective investigations, as counsel, um, it is unfortunately sometimes my job to curb the instincts of our very open and forthcoming chancellor and counsel and advise that we are not going to comment on questions involving law enforcement.

SCI, of course, is a law enforcement agency that are actively open and uh stirring in the press.

Okay, so I'm gonna say, please.

If I could just finish, though, because I do want to speak to the broader points that you made.

Again, I think you've some of the answer to your question is embedded in the question itself.

When SCI talks about 386 million dollars in non-contracted spending, that is across 1,600 schools, and however many 35 district offices, and all of the staff and superintendents, and so it's critically important that we identify when someone has engaged in criminal activity or misconduct.

We work closely with law enforcement as I mentioned earlier when those things happen.

Um, but it's just unfortunately the case that there are bad actors out in the world who see our budget and see an opportunity.

So I don't just want to talk about the just bad actors.

There are sis there are systemic problems that I am gonna ask about.

Agreed, but I think what I'm trying to say is it's important to make those distinctions, right?

That there's a very important difference between some of the examples in the report you're referring to, where people were indicted and went to jail, and examples where we discover at the central level that we need to strengthen training.

We need to recalibrate how much of discretion or decision making about spending happens at the school or the district level as opposed to at central.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

I want to talk about accountability.

It sounds like this may currently still be under investigation, so I won't ask about that.

But I will ask about the dis the decision.

I'm interested to know about the decision to keep Mariella Graham on and to uh promote her, because the SCI recommended her immediate termination due to lapses in judgment.

And my understanding is she was given a two-week suspension under the previous administration.

That's correct, and I'm also once again I'm I apologize, Chancellor.

Um, but I'm just gonna say that is a fact connected to an active, I don't know if there's an active investigation, but I do read the press carefully.

What I will say is it is not uncommon.

It's it is my office that receives SCI reports, works up what not only the report but the evidence that the investigative file that comes along with the report, um, and then makes a recommendation about proper disciplinary action.

So it was your office that recommended uh not to go by the recommendation of SCI?

Not gonna comment on what happened in this case.

What I will say is that it is not uncommon.

I'm asking about a closed investigation, or my understanding is it's closed investigation.

The recommended the recommendation was was made, so this is outside of uh any current investigation that may be going on.

I'm asking about a uh personnel decision.

It's important for the city and and this committee to understand that when there is what is illegal activity, right, that we understand why the decisions at the DOE were made that were in in conflict or in contrast to what the recommendations by SCI were.

So it's about trust and accountability.

Thank you.

Certainly, Chair.

I I totally understand that the challenge that I face at the moment as council is that there is active and to my mind, somewhat wild speculation going on in the press about whether the closed investigation may be reopened, whether the investigating agency properly fulfilled its obligations with all of that open, I hope very much that at some point in the future we'll be able to return and get into more detail about this situation, but I think it is just too dynamic right now with too many moving pieces for me to counsel my client to be as open as I know he would like to be, and as I know you would wish him to be.

Okay.

But I'm uh just to be clear, I'm not the press, I'm not asking about press stories, I'm asking about a closed investigation that is that is public.

This was from their public website.

I didn't acquire some secret documentation.

Oh, this is this is on their website.

Anyone anyone can go to their website and download this?

They they list a number of things which I'm gonna go through, but it is a question, I think of of judgment and accountability, and I think the committee deserves to understand that if the SCI makes recommendations, what the thought process is, or what it isn't, it seems in this case, for not abiding by those recommendations, and why this person gets a promotion when it was recommended they be terminated.

I think we deserve to understand those thought processes.

I agree.

I I do not disagree, but what I'm saying is the matters that you are describing as closed are being discussed in the press as possibly not closed or possibly something that law enforcement is being re encouraged to real.

But you're a lawyer.

It's closed, it's it's closed.

Yes, but I but my job is not just to look back but to look forward and assess risk and have a duty of care.

So looking forward then, looking forward, does it do the DOE make any commitment that if a employee of the DOE engages in impropriety and breaks the law but doesn't go to jail, can they commit that there will be accountability for that person?

Like these are our tax dollars, these are our children.

Certainly so let's look forward.

SCI's finding SCI did not find that anyone broke the law in this report.

SCI's finding was that there was a violation of New York City and New York City public schools policy, that is not breaking the law suggests illegal activity that could be criminally chargeable that is not anywhere in or near this report.

Thank you for the clarification.

So in the case that someone violates policy, which resulted in a in a in an adult being in a classroom with children that shouldn't have been there.

That this adult presented serious lapses in judgment, SCI did recommend the termination.

Looking forward, how seriously does the DOE take the recommendations of SCI, or are they mere recommend or are they just recommendations that DOE will not abide by?

We will we always take SCI's recommendations seriously.

We also have an obligation to have fidelity to the idiosyncrasies of any given case.

And so while I can't sit here and discuss the evidence that we reviewed that was developed by SCI in support of their report, I can tell you that my team and I, I personally signed off on the disciplinary decision that was made in this case.

And that was your you signed off, and that was your recommendation as well, or you just approved that.

I'm not gonna I'm not gonna discuss internal deliberations.

I'm willing to share the outcome, and that's what it was.

Okay.

Uh I I will say it's it's a very lawyer answer, and I understand, but it's very disappointing.

And I don't want to belabor this one employee, but this is indicative of of problems that that do exist.

I believe they're more systemic than any SCI investigation will let on because any teacher, any professional who works in a school understands a lot of the nonsense that uh they've seen uh some principals spend money on.

I've uh been sent on professional developments uh where thousands of dollars were spent under that $25,000 cap, which deserved a lot more scrutiny than would ever be done with under the $25,000 cap.

Um, given that, given that I understand you don't take SCI's recommendations for individual um employees, uh they did make recommendations for improving the systems, uh, and that is not under litigation right now, that's not under investigation.

So I'd like to talk about each of those.

Uh you mentioned training, uh enhanced training.

Now, currently that training is not required by principals.

Is it the DOE's policy is going, is the DOE going to make that training required for principals who deal with millions of dollars in their budgets?

Uh, Chair, this is of course something we have to discuss with our union partners, but in my lawyerly view, um, we should, and I hope we'll be able to negotiate to that outcome.

Is that the view of the chancellor as well?

Yes.

That they should.

Okay.

SCI recommended increased oversight of non contracted vendors.

In what ways has DOE implemented or are attempting to implement this this uh recommendation?

Thank you for that.

Um those recommendations also implied um that we would need an influx of resources that we don't necessarily have at the moment.

And this is why uh at the top of the discussion when we were talking about procurement reform one of the ways that we think we could address that is by centralizing the procurement function because with it with having to clarify centralizing procurement for those sub-25 thousand dollar because we'll have more well you know that would make me accountable as the chief procurement officer.

Well maybe not given some of these answers I don't know.

You know well to some extent right I mean because then you know if you you know when I mean and I think you notice when you decentralize things that you know it creates um you know all of these uh pockets of um oh vulnerabilities if you add I mean I think that would probably the best term it creates vulnerabilities right because you just don't have oversight and so I think centralizing the procurement function itself will solve for that to some extent now not saying it's going to solve for it all right because like I said it's it we're 1600 schools but it creates um you know it'll allow us to standardize processes internal processes uh it'll allow us to strengthen our standard operating procedures and also uh ensure that we're also looking at our policy to ensure that we can you know tighten that up to ensure that you know that these we can minimize these occurrences in the future yeah I mean in an ideal world right because the chancellor mentioned autonomy of these schools and for from I think most all of them that's very important um in an ideal world you want to raise that twenty five thousand dollars um you know Dr.

uh count deputy speaker council member doctor Nantasha Williams um organized a round table of MWE providers and one of the concerns they raised was that it's hard for them to compete especially for these sub-2500 um contracts and my and my response to them is what I'll share on the record now which is I I think it would be great if your companies would more easily do business with DOE however we do have this systemic problem of these under 25 thousand dollar contracts which has not to date been I think truly addressed uh and unfortunately we can't just rely on principals or school leaders volunteering to take training I think they should be required to take this training right and be held accountable uh you know if SCI makes recommendations um it's it's still a puzzle as as to why someone who exercised serious lapses in judgment which resulted in an adult being in a room with children shouldn't have been in would would continue and be promoted.

SCI recommended stronger safeguards to ensure the integrity of bids and procurement documentation has the DOE implemented this recommendation we haven't implemented uh a lot of the recommendations because again I um I had stated earlier that it's going to require some structural changes and also some changes to policy these things take time so um so we're we're we're it's under advisement and we're currently working uh internally to figure out how we could roll that out what is a time I mean you have the best lawyer in New York City sitting right there what's your timeline unfortunately I don't I unfortunately don't have a a timeline in the in the moment but it it's all a part of the broader procurement reform strategy.

So I will ask and I'll say it's under advisement but SCI recommended increased scrutiny of sole source procurements.

So uh and they made a recommendation that we actually um absolutely agree with and that's something that I'm working with my team on uh just in turn in terms of ensuring that uh all that that schools are seeking proper approvals for those items and what is proper approval look like so you know for a sole source um you know uh there are instances where vendors will say that they're the sole you know that they're the sole provider of this good or service, right?

Um, but the the truth of the matter is if a sole source item, if we're if an item is not considered or good or service is not considered sole source if I can purchase it elsewhere, right?

And so, well, I just to be clear, I I understand it as if you're a vendor and you tell me that it's sole source, that that's good enough.

Yeah, no.

That's not the case.

No, no.

Okay, please explain.

No, so yeah, vendors tell you that, right?

The Chair Lee says check Amazon.

Exactly.

Check Amazon.

If I like if you say that, you know, you're the only person that sells this pen, right?

You know, it's my team or whoever, the school's um responsibility to actually do the proper due diligence to ensure that they cannot purchase it elsewhere.

Because if you can purchase it elsewhere, then you can bid it out competitively, right?

Because the goal is to ensure that you're getting the best pricing, right, for this pencil.

But just you know, a vendor stating and and a letter that you know they're the sole provider of that.

That's to me, that's I could save you millions of dollars.

Shop DOE is the most expensive place to buy pens.

You ever go and shop DOE?

Yeah.

You don't go and shop DOE?

That's like the website that we're that you're supposed to use.

It's like one pen, fifteen dollars.

It's awful.

You do go go on right.

Council member Joseph, another forever educator, she knows.

So if you want to save millions of dollars, go on that website and like watch your eyes bulge out.

And we're not even allowed to use coupons.

No coupons, no no discounts, and not to can't go to staples.

You seriously don't know about this.

Well, you're asking me if I don't know about Shop Two.

Shop TUE?

Of course I know about it.

Of course you know, shop too.

Okay.

My God.

I thought you said you didn't.

She's never bought pens from Shop TUE.

Don't.

Um, go to a city agency, they have all their free swag you can go to.

Um, I want I do want to move on.

Uh there's this is certainly an issue that is of of great importance and great concern that we will continue with.

Um, you know, uh, as time goes on, I hope all the legal issues are worked out so that information can be shared publicly.

Um, but also getting a timeline on what those changes are.

300 somewhat million dollars is no small chunk of change, and if there are ways to improve upon that, and also ideally and someday in the future allow for more of our MWBEs to have access to our schools, that would be the ideal scenario.

Um I want to ask about restorative justice.

Um this is a program that you talk to any educator, any principal, they love it, it works, our students love it, it works, it's important, it's important for the social emotional health and their academics.

Uh, it was provides alternative responses to conflicts at schools, including interventions when harm is happened, as well as practices that help to prevent harm and conflict by building a sense of belonging, safety and social responsibility in the school community.

Uh and again, um this is something I've impl I implemented in my classes, my classrooms, I not only saw greatest community in my classroom, but my test scores went up, engagement in the classroom went up.

The fiscal 2027 budget includes a cut of six million dollars for sort of justice, and I want to say that again, a cut of six million dollars for a program that worked and one that I I believe the mayor uh believes in and actually campaigned on.

Um what would be the programmatic result if the six million dollars in funding in the budget for fiscal twenty twenty-six is not added for fiscal twenty twenty-seven?

Yeah, thank you for for your question.

I also believe deeply in restorative practices, and I believe that um in order to do it well, there has to be significant capacity building, which we've been working on over the last number of years with these schools.

So there's significant capacity to do this work, and I want to turn it over to uh Chief Mark Rampersat to talk a little bit more about that.

Were you sworn in?

I swear to tell the truth.

Do you affirm to tell the truth?

It's not just the truth, I think we have to go back, it's the whole truth, and also nothing but the truth.

Nobody else did that, but I'll swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

So, thank you.

Thank you for the for the question and uh I appreciate the sentiments of a school teacher, um, an educator, to talk about the importance of restorative, and what you shared is exactly what would be missing if we're not able to continue to restore those funds.

One of the things about the the whole notion of restorative is is the work that goes into it is to really build muscle so that the work can continue, right?

So we don't need to continue to bring in vendors to provide services when we have strengthened all of our adults to continue to apply those services.

You talked you talk so.

So are you I just want to be clear on what you're saying?

Are you saying a six million dollar cut will not result in any service reductions that we already have the professionals there to do the work and we're good?

That's not what I say.

Okay.

I swear to tell the truth.

Yeah, that's the whole truth.

Not yours, mine.

Good, good, good.

Okay.

So what I am saying to you is that the work is important and the a part, the foundation of the work is to build the muscle of our staff to continue that work.

Yes, it will, it will it will be painful if the six million is not restored.

It will not allow us to continue to provide the services to the level that we provide today and continue to strengthen more schools to be able to carry out these practices and change mindsets and do all of the things that you just described.

It will result in a cut to services to schools.

How many schools will lose restorative?

How many schools, if a six million dollar cut is implemented, will lose access to restorative justice programming?

Approximately two hundred and fifty or so.

Two fifty schools will lose access to restorative justice program if the six million dollars is cut.

How many schools total receive uh restorative justice programming?

About 960 or so at various levels.

So you're talking about over 25% of our schools which rely on these services and these programs will lose access to those services.

Um the previous administration began project pivot, which provides similar programming to the restorative justice.

However, the council is unclear on the details of this program and how it differs from restorative justice.

Families and students seem to prefer restorative justice programs.

Um would the DOE be interested in combining the resources for these programs to expand restorative justice uh programming?

So let me be clear, right?

So the programs provide two different services, right?

Um, the restorative is a mindset shift, right?

The the project pivot is bringing in vendors to support schools in the areas where they're struggling.

So if there is a safe passage issue, right?

They're bringing in vendors to be outside of the schools to safely transport or allow young people to transport safely to and from school.

It's some of those initial vendor direct provisions of resources.

What restorative is doing is changing the mindset in teaching our staff to to be sort of more mindful of the why around students' actions, right?

They're two totally different, and they and interestingly enough, they do both exist in some of the same schools providing different services, but for the same outcomes, and that is for the betterment of our young people.

Okay, so there's no two ways about it, there's no shifting money around, there's no two ways about it.

Restorative justice, uh, the administration proposed cutting it by six million dollars.

Twenty uh over twenty-five percent of schools will lose this service.

This is a critically important service and program for our students for the safety and emotional well-being of our students, and as so many of us know the academic benefits to restorative justice.

Um I'm gonna pause there and turn it over for questioning, and we're gonna start with council member.

Shulman, time to get to receipt.

Council Member Shulman.

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chancellor.

Um, it's very good to see you and thank you for all the things you've done in my district and come out and all of that.

Um, so I have a two two things.

One is I wanted to do a quick follow-up on the new visions tool uh from the speaker.

So um the new visions tool has a lot of support from principals, particularly in my district.

Many claim it's been instrumental in monitoring and improving student performance, graduation rates, and attendance.

So at a time when NVI is working across agencies to support every child and family is known.

You know, I just want you to keep that in mind while um the division of instructional and informational technology hasn't really shown a record of success yet, building tools in schools.

So for the record.

Okay, one.

The other question, which is sort of simple but not simple.

What percentage of schools do not have air conditioning in communal spaces, such as gymnasiums, auditoriums, and cafeterias, are schools expected to secure reserve funding for AC in these spaces if they do not have it, and how is DOE working to ensure equitable access to air conditioning system-wide?

I every year, and particularly this year, I'm getting calls about this.

Um, in addition to which you saw that we've had a number of 90 degree days, even before we got to like it's only the second week in June.

So and it's supposed to do climate change, it's gonna get warmer and everything else.

So please.

Yes, uh, totally.

I, you know, if you've ever had to sit in a graduation in a school and auditorium.

Um, and we're upon graduation season, and so um we've been really working, and yes, a lot of our schools have um used resoe to fund these air conditions and class in these common areas.

So I just want to turn it over to Kevin Moran to talk more about um our plans there.

Yes, uh great seeing you, and thanks for the question.

Um, certainly as it relates to air conditioning, we benefit greatly from the AC for all initiative that covers all of our classrooms and all our instructional spaces.

Um, we've taken the heat law and put it on our InfoHub for all principles, and uh I want to thank all our principals and administrators that that do this work on a daily basis to make sure students are not in spaces that exceed 88 degrees.

It's eighty-two degrees, you need to take action according to state law, edlaw, and eighty eight, you need to not use that space.

So we're thankful uh for the support of the council for all instructional spaces, and so that brings us to your question as how we do public assembly spaces.

So I think we're right now, right now hovering at five 5,705 public assembly spaces.

Many of those spaces you've all helped us through resoe grants.

Uh, we funded them, schools have figured out a way to fund them.

Our division of school facilities had just done aviation's cafeteria, sheep's head bays, gymnasium.

So we're working with our tax levy base.

Um it is not a capitally funded category right now, so uh maybe that's the next best thing.

But currently, to answer your question, um, the number of PA spaces with AC is at uh 2300, so about 60 percent of our public assemblies do not currently have AC.

Okay, we'll talk about that at some other point.

Um, I'm gonna stop my question, but I what I will ask the chair is if we can send written questions that we don't get to ask to um public schools so that they can answer it.

Okay, thank you so much.

Thank you, Chair, very much.

Okay, um, next we have Deputy Speaker Williams, followed by Councilmember Joseph.

Thank you so much, Chair.

Um, so the mayor's Office of Equity and Racial Justice released its first prelim racial equity plans this April.

Um this plan, of course, includes many goals from New York City Public Schools.

Can you speak to what you submitted?

Um, and if any of these goals have any fiscal implications for this year's budget.

Thank you so much for this question, as you know.

Um, thank you so much, Dr.

Williams.

As you know, we are truly committed to you know, um, equity and um racial uh certainly uh school integration, and we are going I'm gonna turn it over to um uh Karina Pollen to talk a little bit more about this, but make sure you swear in.

Good afternoon, everybody.

I swear to tell the whole truth the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

So help me God.

I think she's putting like you out of a job.

So nobody could have.

So as it relates to what is in the plan, I'll give you a quick overview on some of the priorities that we've established in the plan.

Um, beginning with um early childhood, uh, leading the equity initiatives impacting early childhood um programs and services pathways is a huge priority, leading equity focused career, college and workforce readiness initiative, um, with the vision of inclusive um access, I'm reading it.

Yep, inclusive access, leading uh inclusive and accessibility focused racial equity programs, including supports for students with disabilities and multi-generational learners for minority and women-owned businesses.

Uh leads supplier diversity and contracting and procurement related to equity commitments, and uh with the first deputy chancellor's office leading instructional equity initiatives, including New York City Reads and New York City Solve.

Um, in addition to that, working with the different departments within the school system to ensure a strong implementation, tracking and accountability around those around that work.

Yeah, and are any of these goals, do they have any fiscal implications?

So are there any budgetary items that are attached to you all achieving those goals?

As it relates to the funding, most of this is designed around these are not standalone initiatives, and so what we're doing is leveraging the existing dollars, but making sure that we're put prioritizing across existing budgets and operational decisions.

We are embedding racial equity into how we allocate resources, set our priorities, and also make policy and programmatic decisions across the system.

And so in a system that is diverse as we are in New York City public schools, I think this racial equity plan reinforces this work and by prioritizing, but making sure that every decision that's made and every implementation and accountability is tied to this work.

Yes, and we've been asking all the agencies very similar questions, and I feel like there's a trend of many of the agencies saying that they are going to like reappropriate or look at your existing budget, which is great.

And I know that some of these programs may be duplicative based off of what you recently submitted, but I do hope in like future fiscal years where there may be budgetary implications to actually do the work that you don't just use existing money, but there'll be dedicated funding streams to support many of the goals within your agency.

So just a question about equity in school budgets, fair student funding created and implemented in 2007 to the 2008 school year is the main funding source for traditional city public schools.

This formula adjusts school budgets based on a school student population and student needs.

This formula is meant to promote equity in school budgets as schools are funded based on need.

Has there been any recent analysis of the FSF SFF formula and its ability to promote equity?

And what are some of the limitations of this funding model?

So we there are there are significant limitations or some limitations, but really um SFSF uh has the weights that we've used uh over the past have led to more um you know equity in our school budget system and uh I'll turn it over to our chief uh financial officer to talk some more about that.

Yep, thank you.

So as you may be aware, about three years ago we actually added new weights to um our sorry I popped them in my mouth, I'm hungry.

Um we added uh two new weights to our fair student formula for uh students in temporary housing and to capture concentration of high need at schools, and so there are ongoing analysis, and that was based on recommendations from the FSF working group.

I know there's been a call to re-establish it, and I know the chancellor has already uh committed to us, you know, having uh the necessary conversations around it.

So while we didn't make any updates for this upcoming school year, it is conversations that we are prepared to have.

The current class size funding distribution model allocates significant funding towards low-need schools as they are typically the schools struggling with class-sized compliance.

Has New York City Public Schools done any analysis on how class-sized funding affects the equity of funding across schools, and are there any considerations and how um to distribute class-sized funding more equitably?

Yeah, thank you for that.

Absolutely.

We've thought we've been thinking about how to uh prioritize uh schools and areas that um have high economic need in the in the process around um ensuring the reduction in class size.

And I'm gonna turn it over to uh Erin to talk a little bit more about this.

Hi, um Erin Jahant.

I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about class size.

Okay.

So I think um again, last year's approach um was schools opted in to the funding, right?

So that was mainly driven schools that were in um, you know, maybe had a greater gap uh in terms of where they were and where they needed to get to to decrease class size.

It because again, it was it was driven by the schools.

We know that, you know, schools in say wealthier communities might have larger class sizes.

Um, and so again, I think the process last year that it was opting in from the schools up, probably led to some of the funding, uh, or definitely led to the funding outcomes last year.

I think what we're looking at this year, right?

Acknowledging that um equity is a critical um priority of the chancellor, and um we are looking at prioritizing schools and higher uh higher ENI schools this year and the funding distribution, which we're working on right now, um, but that's a core part of our work looking at higher ENI schools alongside schools that have space to comply.

Yeah, I think it's also important to um distinguish what and high how we think about what a high ENI school is, right?

So you could you if you just go by percentages, then you know, some schools may look like their low ENI, and some schools may look obviously like they're high.

If you have a school with 200 kids, that's 90 percent um free and reduced lunch, then that's gonna be um an a number that's uh about 180 students.

But if you look at a school that has 3,000 students, and there are you know 50 percent ENI that might look like it's a lot lower, but that would be 1500 students, right?

So the way we're looking at ENI, we want to really focus on the number so that we're getting to um we're we're getting to address uh a large number of students rather than only the percentages, which may be which may distort the actual number of students that you're uh impacting.

Okay, in the interest of time, um, and I'll make sure we send the questions, but I just wanted to talk about these topics really quickly, still under the theme of equity in school budgets.

I know this has come up a ton of times.

I feel like it's coming up a lot more more recently, just wealthier districts um reported raising of PTAs, so there are PTAs that have reported raising over a million dollars, while other schools report no additional funding through their PTA, and so um again, would love to see how New York City Public Schools is addressing this particular issue when it comes to school resources.

Um, on another topic, teacher recruitment and retention.

So, um, you know, we know that there has been a considered focus on workforce diversity.

53% of educators are white, and the majority of public school students are not love white teachers.

Love Mr.

Peterson, he's literally the only person that has ever made me love math in my entire academic career.

However, New York City is a very diverse school um district, and so just wanting to understand as you all have been increasing the funding for recruitment this year to comply with class class size mandates, using this as an opportunity to continue your efforts to um hire a diverse workforce.

Like we know you have New York City Men Teach to recruit black Latino and Asian men.

Um, so we'd love to just understand how you all are using your additional funds to continue to increase diversity amongst um school educators.

Equity and due process cases.

So we have a term and condition um that the council has received from New York City Public Schools showing the demographic makeup of the student population with due process cases settled or closed in fiscal 2025, which is significantly different than the demographic makeup of public school student enrollment in the 2024-2025 school year.

Um so just want to understand your thoughts on this difference and what it means for the question of equity and who is actually receiving um these services when our school systems are failing children who have learning differences, as I like to say.

Um questions related to things in my district.

Um so New York City Public Schools has consistently talked about preparing students for jobs of the future.

Um, you know, yet access to high quality programs remain uneven across schools and communities.

So I just want to understand what investments is New York City Public Schools making to expand dedicated theme centers citywide, how many currently exists, where are they located?

Do you have any timelines?

Um, and just just making it a loaded question, and I would love to get your answer on this, and then I'm done.

Um, so students like mine's in Southeast Queens, we're surrounded by a major economic injury, which is the airport, yet many students lack direct access to specialized um STEAM facilities that connect learning careers and aviation, engineering, cybersecurity, um, AI, advanced tech.

So, also just wanting to understand your plan to ensure geographic distribution, um, and whatever other resources could be included in this budget to align with the many goals that um New York City Public School has.

Yeah, so that was a lot.

So I should focus on the theme center.

How many do you have?

So, um where are they located?

And what is your plan to explain?

Oh, Jane's coming, great.

The perfect person to answer the question on the record about New York City public school theme centers.

Love that.

So, in in thinking about our Steam Centers, we have um the Brooklyn Steam Center, we have the Bronx Team Center that we're working on, and as well, and and I know we have uh plans on our in in conversations about the Queens.

Now, when it comes to aviation, and you know, I do have to shout out uh Aviation High School that I visited in Queens.

It was um isn't in Long Island City, and it's like an hour and a half to get there.

We do have August Martin.

Okay, they have an aviation program, so shout outs to August Martin, but it is not as a person who worked really closely with August Martin, they the kids were not in the cockpit for a decade, and I was able to help get outside funding to get the kids in the cockpit.

So I understand we do have August Martin, but that program is not specialized in the ways in which the Steam Center is, and it is not connected to industry in the ways in which the STEAM centers are.

Totally.

And so we're we're beginning to and having real conversation about the sustainability of the STEAM centers that are in place right now.

We are, you know, each year we uh dedicate funding specifically to those two that are currently in existence and have uh and are expanding their programs uh planning to expand their programs into next year.

And so I'm gonna turn it over to Jane, who said uh to talk a little bit more about what we're doing regarding Steam Centers.

Thank you for the question.

Deputy Chair Dr.

Williams.

Uh so with our Steam Center Steam Centers, you correctly say they are an incredible innovation.

We have our um innovation at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which is now not as new as the other ones, and then this year we um have really focused on ensuring that our Bronx Steam Center, which is focusing on our partnership with Monte View around health care access, uh, is beginning to grow.

As you know, you've been an incredible part of the feasibility work that's happening in Queens to ensure that we have that same kind of opportunities in the aviation industry for our Queens folks.

Um, it is an incredible investment that we think is very important to very carefully look through.

So we are working all year um to with along with the aviation folks and with um several potential anchor partners to ensure that we can actually have this not just be an innovation but a real sustainable model um that we can replicate in the in Queens.

Thank you.

And yes, I would love for it to be included in the budget, so it truly does look like a sustainability model.

I mean, yes, there's one in Brooklyn, there's one coming to the Bronx.

Hopefully, we have one in Queens, but there are two other boroughs missing from that.

Um, so we'd love to see it reflected in how you all do your budgets because as far as I'm concerned, I think you only have the 15 million dollars that I negotiated, so I don't um necessarily see a legitimate commitment from New York City Public Schools because you haven't committed any funds outside of for Queens outside of the ones that I negotiated from the previous administration.

So we'll love to see that reflected in your budget.

Thank you.

Okay, great.

Uh, we have council member Joseph followed by Wong.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, good to see you, Chancellor.

Um, do we continue to struggle to provide students with disabilities with necessary services?

We're thrilled the DOE's expanding and to provide 2K meeting needs earlier, should reduce the number of due process cases at a later stage in the child's education.

As we begin to educate younger and younger in New York, how is New York City public schools coordinating with ACS, DOHNH and other agencies to ensure child's needs are met daily as practicable?

Yes, that is something that's very, very important to me, which is why when I uh thought about the restructuring, really thinking about putting foster care, open arms, all of those um uh pieces on in the same um environment and uh making sure that we have um very seamless communication between um the office of uh the deputy chancellor for community partnerships and the uh and dial, and so I'm gonna turn it over to um Christina Fodi as well as Flavia Padermo to talk a little bit more about that.

To talk about 2K coming into the system, how they're getting services.

Remember, they come before early intervention.

We're gonna talk about you in a minute.

Yeah.

Get yourself together, but I'm gonna talk to DC Fodi first.

So Hawkins and DC 40.

Yeah, so what are you doing for?

Yeah.

Thank you, Chancellor.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Um, and so what you raise is a really important point, and it's especially as we shift down the entry point into our school system.

And so we've been very deliberate in partnering, and we already partner with our DOHMH colleagues, um, the specifically the Bureau of Early Intervention.

Um, and so what we've been doing specifically on 2K is creating a very intentional accommodations process.

We have some universal supports that we do as a through line, right?

And that's what we should be doing, not just for two-year-olds, but all of our littles, no matter how old they are.

And so that really is around like the appropriate coaching, making sure they differentiate.

They as the educators and school leaders differentiate based on the needs of our our littles, but then we also know we need some more targeted interventions.

So we have a referral and we are creating a more thoughtful referral process with our EI colleagues, and also our office, the Office of School Health at DOHMH.

Because what we understand is early intervention meets a very specific purpose, but some of our little might need something different.

And so we're partnering with the Office of School Health, Dial, they're working side by side.

That's my girl, and her team working with our team to make sure we're coordinated, that there's proper redundancy but not unnecessary duplication, and that our littles and their families are having a seamless experience through and through.

And if the service is not being provided, you're stepping in and provide and filling in that gap as well, right, Deputy Chancellor.

Yeah, we're gonna, as DC Hawkins said, we're gonna work side by side to make sure that students have what they need to access the program.

And um, real quick, thank you, Chair.

Um, our students in temporary housing, attendance, absenteeism rate.

The last time we spoke here, the absenteeism rate is 63%.

Always want to know how are you working with different agencies to combine that effort, DSS, ACS, how are you combining that effort to make sure that we're bringing down that AT absenteeism rate and also academics, right?

Not to only buy students in temporary housing items, but are we providing support, academic support, tutoring, mental health support?

How we're supporting our students in temporary housing.

Thank you for that question.

And as you uh part of our conversations earlier, we really have spent in the last five months uh concentrated effort to meet with our families and shelters, and um, you know, Flavia has led that effort.

So I'm gonna lead her to talk.

I'm gonna ask her to talk more about that.

Thank you, Chancellor.

Um, thank you, Councilmember Joseph.

Um, I wanna just first begin.

I know that you're well versed in the definition, but just so that we're all understand that when we say chronically absent, it means that a student at any given point has mean 10% of the school.

So 89% attendance, you're chronically absent.

We know that for vulnerable student population, there's always um the disproportionate rates of chronic absenteeism.

I I want to call that out because counting today, we have 14 days of the school year remaining for old students and about five days for our high school students who who take regions.

So if you're out 18 days of the year, you're chronically absent, and and it's not just an arbitrary number, it's a national standard because at that point we begin to see correlations between academic achievement and attendance.

And that is why that number is so critical for all of us.

And with that, I want to say that the support that we're doing both for attendance and for students who overall and for students who are in temporary housing vary from looking at central support.

So for example, this year we recruited 32 attendance teachers who are part of our total attendance pool to provide dedicated home visits during holidays, during weekends, and after work hours to try to make it more easily accessible to reach those families for students who had been out.

I can say that out of total, 4,327 visits were done for these students, particularly targeting students in shelters.

And an immediate result that we saw following those home visits is that those students then came into school.

Similarly, which I think is when we look at like what are the what are the ingredients and what are the things that the central team led by Dr.

April Leon and the many uh leaders who are there have been doing is working with our schools to ensure that the Title I funding the schools are receiving in their budget are really using Fidelity to look at like how do we mitigate the challenges for these students.

In 2022, there were approximately 72 million dollars that were provided to schools across the system to support that.

2025-26, this current school year, that's 125 million.

And that's money that's sitting in each of our school budgets across the city, specifically dedicated to support the needs of students in shelter.

So one of the things that we're working to is not just that the money spent, but that it's spent with fidelity and it's spent on things that are not commodities, but things like counseling support services, things like attendance interventions, um looking at um college and career readiness programs.

Are there tutoring like the, for example, one of the work that we're doing with wind shelters where we have weekends programs that we do in those sites to meet the needs of those students?

So I think the idea is like looking at the whole infrastructure that is exist for attendance, like the work that we do to deploy attendance teachers to superintendent, the work that we have done that has allowed us, in fact, to reduce chronic absenteeism by 9% for students in shelters as an example, but there's still so much more that we need to do.

That's also another example why initiative like community schools in our second wave of community schools that were expanded now about four years ago.

One of the indicators that we were looking at were students, schools that had high concentration of students in shelters, because we know that wraparound supports, the notion of a caring adult, the notion that you're gonna have schools that are gonna be looking at data on a daily basis and making calls, we cannot wait for a 407, which is the indicator that you get when a kid is 10 days out.

This is like everyday strategy, making sure that you're making calls, making sure that you're making connections, making sure that you understand the reasons why students are out and that you are creating individualized plan, particularly for students that we know that are vulnerable.

In addition to that, um we're also working with our the Department of Homeless Services to make sure that we come up with strategies that allow us to make local executive order, that we get ahead of when this shelter movement that are happening so that we can plan thoughtfully and make sure that we're helping families navigate any changes that affect their whole living situation that has an implication an implication for schools.

Because at the end of the day, we know that when we look at these students and their families that have been impacted by homelessness throughout years, school stability and access to high quality education is is what's gonna make a difference so that they don't end up in another situation like that and have a different future for the generations to come.

Great, thank you.

Um, Council Member Wong, followed by Lewis.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, Chancellor, thank you for coming today.

Um, I want to talk about a um a situation in my district.

Uh, a nine-dot energy company propose a lithium battery energy energy storage system uh to be built at 64 30, 69th place in Middle Village that's directly across from the school, PSIS 128, is right next to the annex of the building, and facing the lot to the left is the annex of the school 128.

To the right is a daycare center, a preschool, and a children's play area.

Uh, the project is as of right, uh but has not been built yet.

But we know we watch, I watch YouTube, and I'm sure everyone watch YouTube.

Lithium ion battery fires are extremely difficult to suppress.

Uh, the BSS fire in Warwick New York, uh, the fire burned for more than three days in December 2025.

Here's my question.

Uh is a policy question.

When a developer proposes a lithium ion battery storage facility directly across the street from the school.

Um, before it's built, while there's still time to act, does DOE have any written protocol requiring school leadership or the parent coordinator or the PTA to notify families that this proposal exists because this is happening right now, and there's a lot of parents, even teachers said they know nothing about it.

Please answer it.

Oh, that's thank thank you for the question.

I think I'm gonna turn it over to Kevin Moran to see if um there are any policies there, but that's something we can look into as well.

Yeah, first I'd like to thank you uh, Councilmember Wong for your passion advocacy uh and support on this issue.

Uh keeping our school community safe, uh is foundational.

Um, I understand your concerns.

Uh we watched uh carefully the fire in Warwick, New York by the bus depot and by their school, and it did burn for three days, and um our schools do not get involved in land acquisition um engagement activities in and around a school for a lot of good reasons.

Um, as a lawmaker, again, I thank you for your advocacy.

I'd also you know reinforce that there's no law that would uh prevent battery storages from sensitive locations like libraries, schools, churches, gas stations, and so at current uh battery storage facilities, battery farms, as they're being called, can be built within 10 feet of an adjacent property.

And so to the point that you make, it's lawfully and legally permitted.

Um, and the regulatory authority here is the Department of Buildings.

Um, they'll go ahead with the paperwork.

There's advancements there on fire suppression, surveillance, um, and close scrutiny from the fire department.

And so to the extent we could be helpful in this, um, we will be, but no, there's not a role for a PTA or principal or anyone in the school community to play as it relates to land acquisition in and around the school.

Okay, well, thank you for the answer because right now that we still have teachers and parents coming to me and say they're unaware of this project, and there's a big gap where the the whole community is unaware of this proposal, and uh that's across the street from where the children go to school every day.

That's a problem, and then I'll have to talk to legislators in Albany to get this patched up because there's a clearly is not uh it's not safe, it's not the right place.

Well, I would say that it's an emergency, it's an emerging industry in the city.

It's it's meant to relieve the strain placed on the grid right now.

In my neighborhood, I got it right across from my library, right next to a gas station.

I see them going.

Um, and so to the extent uh we can partner on ways to make sure this is done safely for our community.

Uh it would be appreciated.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jim.

Thank you.

Okay, Councilmember Lewis, followed by Brewer.

Thank you, Chair, and good afternoon, Chancellor, to you and your whole team.

You guys look like the Avengers.

Thank you for all being here.

Two quick questions.

Uh, families of students receiving district seventy-five services continue to report that some elementary school students are not consistently receiving specialized support and related services outlined in their IEP programs.

The executive budget includes significant investments in special education services, including additional funding for IESP, support special education, pre-K expansion, and court-ordered special education compliance.

Despite these investments, many families still report service gaps.

How will the DOE measure whether these new investments are actually resulting in improved service delivery?

And what percentage of students currently receive all mandated services without interruption?

I'm gonna quickly just go on to my second question because I don't have a lot of time.

Families have expressed frustration with limited assistance provided by the family welcome centers.

You probably hear this all the time.

The executive budget includes additional funding for family empowerment initiatives and create and yet families continue to report challenges navigating the admissions process.

What is the current staffing level and budget allocation for family welcome centers?

And how have response times and case resolution metrics change over time?

And are there plans to increase staffing in the new budget?

Great question.

And um, I'm gonna start with the first one first.

Um when it comes to services, we've done as a city a much better job over the last number of years.

However, you know, when when one child does not get the services they need, it feels it to us that's a hundred percent.

And so I'm gonna turn it over to Christina Fodi, who's gonna talk more specifically about um services both to special uh um uh students with disabilities in district seventy-five and throughout as well.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

It's so nice to see you.

Regarding district seventy-five, there are a few things that we're doing.

So the first is to date across the board.

I've gotten to that point where I have to do this.

Is 468 providers have been hired this school year?

We've also improved our contracting rates where we're working to provide um incentives to high need areas.

Additionally, if we expanded our ninth session work, which means that our OTs and PTs can be paid to conduct a ninth session of therapy, which is also helping fill that gap.

Um, to date, we are uh at almost at 92% compliance, but as the chancellor said, that is not 100%.

So we will keep going until then.

Um you also know about our seed and weekend academies.

Um as of this past Saturday, our seed acad our seed sites served 15,000 students related services, which is pretty remarkable in sensory gyms.

Um, and so we're doing a lot and the numbers keep growing.

Uh the mandates also keep growing.

Uh, and and that's why the investments are so so important.

All right.

If I get a response on the family welcome centers, I think if you're working.

Thank you for that question.

Um, I don't have the data with me right now, but I'm gonna find follow up with you.

Uh if I have it before the end of today, I'll share that with you.

All right, thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Councilmember Brewer, followed by nurses.

Thank you.

So starting with um mental products.

So we did it, we have a lot of interns, they talked to a lot of schools.

56% of schools said that those period products are almost never available.

Uh 80% said they don't know if a student doesn't know how to report an empty dispenser.

So my question is, um, for the young women in the school system, how much is included in the budget for mental products, and how are you dealing with some of these issues?

Yeah, um, so for the for those we're gonna have to take a look and get back to you on that.

Um, and I don't know if Kevin, you have anything you want to share there.

Thank you.

Uh, Councilmember Brewer, uh, I regret hearing that.

Um, we do survey our schools and work with our principals and custodians on a daily basis.

Um, I will absolutely follow up with the It's not working.

Well, we're gonna follow up on a message to custodians, uh, make sure that they are fully stocked in all locations.

Apologies.

Playgrounds.

So I passed a bill that said uh a certain percentage of playgrounds have to be open within the next 10 years.

Obviously, custodians have to be paid.

What we're doing about this program, opening up playgrounds weekends and during the summer.

Who's in charge of that?

Well, specifically, we we are supportive uh when funded of opening up our parks and having our custodians there to make sure it's open and available.

If there's any specific cases um that are not open in your district.

Um, it's not my district, it's the law.

Yeah, I passed the law.

Right.

And within a certain time period, COE must open more playgrounds by law.

We're committed to that.

Okay, so you're gonna make that happen.

Um, and arts education.

Um, can you give me a sense of does every single school have either an art teacher and then how many have arts programs and are pre-K and even zero to two gonna have art programs?

Yes, uh thank you for that question.

We've been done really good work around um our arts programming over the last uh two years, um, including at the principal level having uh principals uh uh who are now involved in in um in pilots for arts programming.

So I'm gonna turn it over to the first deputy chancellor Junta to add some more.

Hi, all right.

So we have um a great number of schools that are mixed between licensed art uh certified art teachers, um, and then um we have in our elementary schools you don't necessarily have to be a certified art teacher, and then we have lots of our schools that are partnering with cultural organizations to provide the arts.

Can you get back to me with the number of our certified art teachers?

How many schools have cultural organizations and how you evaluate them?

Can you give it to um the first one with the certified um we have about 16 percent of the schools that currently lack a certified arts teacher?

Those include 168 elementary schools, 23 middle schools, 37 high schools, and 25 multi-grade schools.

So conversely, they they do the the vast majority do.

Okay, but we still need 16 percent.

Yes, we certainly do.

Okay, and then in terms of affinity schools, I think we talked about this a little bit before, but how what's the funding situation with them?

So for affinity schools overall, we haven't had any issues with um uh the funding mechanism for affinity schools.

Specifically, we've we've been talking about the new visions portal, but overall for affinity schools is not we've uh their funding is in place.

Okay, because they feel differently.

And then just um I love uh your comic books.

I hate comics, but I like your books, and congratulations on Hold Harmless.

And just in terms of class size, um I understand two years we'll have more time to do, but do you have some sense of how many class sizes have already been reduced?

Because that's phenomenal, and how many have not?

Yeah, so one of the things about the class size law is that that is interesting is that it's not about reducing class size necessarily, it's about getting to the actual compliance numbers.

So, for example, you could have a kindergarten class that started off at 25 students and now is at 22.

It's not at 20, so it doesn't get counted as compliant, but it's been reduced.

And so um, you know, we uh I'm gonna turn it over to Aaron to talk a little bit more about the progress that we've made, but um, but just to say you have to hit the mark to get credit, right?

You can't just reduce, but got it.

I think you all know this, but boy, when somebody gets to 20, which is extatic, just like I have hit gold.

Yes.

And you can tell the private schools go to hell.

Well, I can share the data that we have on um on progress last year.

So K to grades K to three saw 28.7% increase, grades four to five saw a 23% increase.

Middle school grew 20%, high school grew um 16%.

And to the chancellor's point, um, and to your point about overall progress towards class size reduction, um, about a third of the noncompliant classes are only one to three students over the new caps, and we've reduced the number of classes that were six students or more above the cap.

Um that rate declined 12 points, so in uh 29% of classes in FY25 um had six or more above the caps, and now it's down to 17 percent in FY26.

Okay, and it won't slip in the next couple of years, right?

I I mean we what we're doing now is we're working to look at funding for schools um and uh make sure that teachers are available in line with the new caps to make sure that um class sizes are maintained.

Okay, I just think you should keep going because it makes a huge difference.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chairs, and thank you, um uh commissioner and or chancellor and all your team, and I have to say thank you to um Kevin Moran that have been very nice in supporting me in the District 46.

Um, school nurse funding is baseline in this budget.

Does that um put a full-time nurse in every school building citywide this coming year?

Or are schools still sharing one nurse across multiple buildings?

And how much of that health funding rise on federal Medicaid reimbursement that is now at risk.

We all know that.

The second one, the budget adds new funding for preschool special education, a chronic shortage area, right?

How many new seats lean in Brooklyn where parents are still waiting months for placement?

How many community schools operate in Brooklyn and are any of them at risk of closing or scaling back services this year?

And I have another quick things I have to ask you, even though it's DYCD, but I want to bring that to your attention.

Is after school program, the shifting of those um IFPs, people apply for them, and the family, you had a big rally in my district where the community organization, the org that have been taking care of the schools, suddenly find themselves across New York City for the contract similar while they have somebody new or some other organization some elsewhere, not even in Brooklyn.

So I want to know what can parents go because they've been sending me email.

We were under should rallying, so I want to have your input on that.

Yeah, thank you.

And you know, on the issue of art school, I know a lot of the work is done by the Y C D, but um, so going back to the beginning of your question about we've done a lot of work to ensure that our schools have nurses, and I'm gonna turn it over to Kevin Moran to add anything there, and um after that we'll follow up with pre-K special education to um uh Christina Fodi and then finally to Flavia to close out the DYCD conversation on after school.

Okay, uh, real quick on your question, uh, we need all legal mandates as it relates to staffing nurses in all of our school buildings.

But uh I love the so yes, wherever there's a legal mandate to support a student or school community, there's a nurse that's provided.

Sorry.

No, I just want to know that we're not sharing nurses.

Are we still sharing nurses?

Yes, yeah.

Yes.

Um rather they have their nurses in really but the um the budget on um pre-K specialist every school.

Yeah, and and that's something that we are um really committed to given the history of um not necessarily having those services in pre-K.

And so um I'm gonna turn it over to Christina for you to talk about it.

Thank you, Councilmember Narcisse.

You're having me open up Councilmember Joseph's tab of my binder, because usually this is her.

Yeah, so um, so in terms of the 67.5 million, we're so excited and grateful for that.

I am gonna ask you to bear with me on details on that.

In Brooklyn, that's what I'm saying.

The council member.

Here's what I can say, Brooklyn.

Brooklyn will be benefiting as well, and and certainly we're gonna be opening um seats with that.

I can say in the last round of funding, we had 75 seats open in Brooklyn, including the PS6 Flatbush uh Early Childhood Center, which is a very exciting addition, um, and more to come on that front.

Okay.

So, for the community school, they're not gonna close.

No, you're not planning to.

Good afternoon, Councilmember Narcis.

Um, I think your question was asking how many community schools are currently in Brooklyn.

The answer is 146, and those 146 are remaining.

The only instance in recent where there has been any change, if there's like any school consolidating, but the since we refueled the schools that were previously funded through stimulus funding, we had retain the number of community schools which we had citywide, which is a total of 419, still the largest community school investment of any district in the country, and hopefully we can continue to um to look for ways to amplify because we know that those wraparound support services are so critical, and we have specific data that shows the linkage between the long-term impact of community schools and all of the metrics that we're talking about, including student achievement and reduction in chronic absenteeism.

But to your answer, that's 146, and there will be 146 next school year.

Because I have um principals coming to my office sending email.

They're very much ensure that they feel like they should be part of that.

Well, they want to become community.

That's a little different.

Now, now I'm saying like we're gonna talk about it more about community school in my district.

And um the last one, the DYCD, yeah.

So uh just to to be clear, there are contract nuances about um how DYCD does their procruitment for their contracts that really I know DYCD recently had a hearing.

We don't manage their contracts, and I can speak to all of the details of their contracts.

What I can say is that since uh 200 uh 15, we hadn't done citywide uh a procrument for after schools.

So many of our principals that we have now, which I think, you know, in our system, have never had to go through this experience.

What we did do in partnership with DYCD was that as part of their process, we make sure that there was uh a principal ranking and uh a large proportion of the principals did get the CBO that they either ranked uh first or second.

There were multiple schools that um that didn't get it.

I will say that DYCD leadership, including the commission and directly, has been meeting with some of the providers.

We had held meetings with multiple CEC, our community um uh parent councils to make sure that they're clear.

The the one thing that I want us all uh to walk away with, like, yes, as a former principal, if I had like I had a partnership in the South Bronze with one of the CBOs, and if I have to make a change that I felt like I had um another CVO that I felt was more aligned to that, that's gonna be a big shift, and it's something that we're gonna have to work with our principals and work in partnership with DYCD to make sure that we're kind of resetting those relationships and are doing our best to make sure that the services what kids are getting uh continues.

But what I want to be clear is that we haven't had any reduction on seats.

The opposite DYCD added 20,000 seats for after school that hadn't hasn't happened.

So if you have a particular partner, I have a particular time is email me, and we can work.

Yeah, my time is up, my colleagues are waiting, but it's not only me.

I have Sylvina Brooks Power that had to go.

It's the same issue.

I had principal out, I have teachers out, I have parents out.

Is it continuity of care and the services at the same time?

Please email us and we can work with DYCD to work on the I appreciate your time.

I appreciate you as well.

Thank you.

And that was actually a large focus of our DYCD hearing, so it was it was good.

And they they we have we have uh definitely expressed our concerns, so and the commissioner's great.

She's been working with us on that.

So thank you.

Um, okay.

We have oh, we've been joined by Councilmember Krishnan, and we have Councilmember Epstein, followed by Wrestler.

Thank you all, thank you for your time.

I'm gonna talk about after school.

You know, we there are about 250,000 students who get Title I funding, only about 184,000 after school slots.

So what we're seeing, especially done by me, is racial segregation and economic segregation because we don't have free after school.

Just how are we gonna solve this and can we solve this soon?

Look, I think um we see this issue um around the city, and it's it's certainly an issue where, you know, it's it's also an issue of the type of um after school provider and and and what actually we're getting in terms of quality.

Um, and I think you know, schools also work with providers to make sure that they have the ones that don't you know are not um funding funded by title one, that they have uh scholarships for young people and all this, but it's a very difficult thing for a school by itself to ensure the equity in the after-school programs.

But then we have a responsibility to make sure that our schools are racially and economically integrated and after schools are critical component to it.

And you know, I've talked to DYCD about this.

Can we get a commitment from you that we can get a plan to ensure that, especially for our Title one families to have access to free after school in some period of time?

Because that's what we really need.

Yeah, so uh, you know, that's part, I think this is certainly a partnership between us and DYCD.

And I'm and I know we have um some expansion plans and so on, but uh I'm gonna turn it over to uh Flavia to talk a little bit more.

Thank you for the question, Councilmember Um Epstein.

I I do want to flag that there was a commission assemble uh towards the end of the prior administration that was really uh a cross-sector um commission on this notion of universal after school.

So we know that the vast majority of funding for after school for the whole city comes through DYCD.

Then the rest of it is funded through community schools.

A lot of the community schools that I mentioned have the capacity to do that work.

We also have Leaps, which is a state-funded grant that goes directly to CVOs that uh can do that as the parent who benefits from after school myself, because I have a child that um attend New York City public school.

I know that this is something that all the communities, especially in areas of need, welcome.

And this is something that I welcome the opportunity to partner with you and all of the agencies and CVOs that were part of this discussion so that we could actually look at that report that was published less than a year ago.

Some of the first steps to getting to that vision about universal after school, the funding that it will take and the collaboration between the agencies, the OHMH who offers the license because it's it's a multi-layer step, but it's the right um effort to pursue and push.

Yeah, I'm happy to work with Chair Dinowitz, there's uh Stevens and to kind of move this forward.

This is something we see as a racial justice issue and economic justice issue.

Chair, if I can just get another minute.

So I know at the preliminary budget hearings we talked a lot about um literacy issues and making sure that young people, you know, if they get to third grade and they still aren't reading and writing, they're not getting support.

And we see this the school to prison pipeline and talked a lot about trying to get people get to people earlier in their education, mentioned literacy academy, which does a lot of great work and the two literacy uh just like the schools that were started in the prior administration.

I haven't seen anything in this budget that would advance the issues of trying to ensure that our young people, you know, are getting the support that they need.

And I want to just stress that, you know, we really need that because honestly, if if a kid by third grade isn't learning to read, the chance of them, you know, unfortunately failing later in life just can time goes up exponentially.

We'd love to see some commitments here.

Happy to be with uh supportive I possibly can to make sure that happens to ensure that those young people get the support that they need.

Yeah, um so we are completely committed to ensuring that all of our young people are able to read uh and if they're not able to do so by third grade, that we have systems in place that we are developing and have developed to get them on track.

Uh the the main thing that we are doing is our multi-tiered system of support, our MTSS.

I'm gonna turn it over to um our first deputy chancellor to speak in more detail about that.

But but this isn't uh an opportunity for every school across the city to be able to implement this well.

Uh thank you for your question and passionate literacy fan.

Um, building off of Chancellor's comments, you know, our commitment to expanding New York City Reads is one such step.

Um we've expanded um our reach now into middle schools, and so New York City reads lives across um all of our elementary schools and most of our middle schools at this point.

We're layering that in with multi-tiered systems of support, which he just said, which is the using of screeners to really catch uh where tier what kids are missing um key concepts in tier one and being able to like really pinpoint what it is that's getting in their way and an aligned high quality intervention um to help catch them up.

But it doesn't just live just there, it's also a close partnership with uh Deputy Chancellor Fodi and the specialized programs that she's seeking to grow and the work of universal child care because we all know and agree, like the sooner we get our kids um in a literacy rich environments with uh in in a thriving way and then in supports when they need them, is the critical the critical difference as it relates to the um the literacy academies that you spoke of I have recently been able to meet with the team and learned so much more about their work and yes we are in very early conversations around expanding those schools and I know they're very interested in bringing one to Queens great I look forward to whatever help I can provide on that because the you know those six week intensive programs really work and the last thing I'll just flag is love that we're doing more internships I have a district seventy five school there kids are thriving for internships they were denied this year to get those internships is anything we can do to create more opportunities I have schools like with schools where the kids are in the country less than two years and those young people want internships they've been able to get some resources as much as we can do because we're going to keep those kids in school if we get them those money to get those internships and money and opportunity.

Otherwise we see high dropout rates in those schools yeah absolutely council member I I if you could send me the information on those I'm very curious to know about why that was the case if it was perhaps um travel that was in the way I do want to say that we are deeply interested in expanding our travel training programs that is often a barrier of why kids have a district 75 struggle to get their work based learning opportunities and we've seen incredible results via travel training so I I will definitely dig in and yes looking to expand that we would love to follow up and I'll have my team reach out to you directly thank you.

Thank you chairs uh wrestler followed by Vilas.

Thank you chairs uh Chancellor and team good to see you all um I know you're all not gonna comment on that oddly timed New York Post article but briefly could you just elaborate we've experienced an extreme shortage in Spanish language teachers over the last few years especially with the migrant crisis it was exacerbated.

Could you just briefly elaborate in some detail on the breadth of or the the uh the shortage that we've been facing across the schools in New York City.

Yeah we've uh had significant shortage in um Spanish language uh and and uh L teachers in general prior to the arrival of the New Yorkers and certainly exacerbated by that and also continues to be a shortage area that we um we experience and I know um we have our uh uh Amy we here who can speak more to that in 15 seconds in our I'm not kidding we are sorry yeah 15 seconds okay sorry it's a big I know but two sentences first I'll swear to I swear to tell the truth um only the truth uh Amy Way executive director for teacher recruitment and quality um world languages is an extreme shortage area um what we are doing are is on two fronts um one is I wasn't asking that I appreciate it I was just asking for the data on what the shortage was over the last two years but if you don't if you want to offer that I can follow up with you on that we can send it to um next up hold harmless funding so uh just to reiterate your testimony no impacts on hold harmless funding in the budgets that will be released for every school early next week in the initial budget that's correct but mid year adjustments TBD yes okay and any insight that you can offer to your approach on hold harmless funding a gradual step down or anything to that effect if we do see mid-year adjustments right no we have uh held initial budgets harmless and we're gonna continue to have conversations about the sustainability of schools and um you know uh but no decisions on the mid-year just I appreciate the the policy I think that you know welcome a conversation on how we navigate this over time and I appreciate budgets being released by early next week because I think the council is sometimes put in a impossible situation where we don't know the budgets of our individual schools and are expected to adopt the budget for the city of New York as a whole, and there's no budget that's more important to me than the 40 odd schools that are in my district.

So we want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to protect them and fill in gaps for them, but we can only do that once we know the budget.

So thank you for getting that out by early next week.

Um 3K pre-K.

Nice to see you, Deputy Chancellor.

Appreciate all your work.

Um, I am very grateful for the significant expansion of 3K and pre-K that we've seen across our district.

Um we have been told that additional seats are being added to Green Point in Green Point.

Can you quantify beyond the PS 110 swap of a classroom there?

How many additional seats are being added in the 11222 zip code?

I'll get that to you, Councilman.

Okay.

Um because we've heard the number 42 and we'd love to confirm that if and when it's possible to do so.

I also just want to flag at PS31 uh also in Green Point.

We've had many families uh we've had zone family zoned for kindergarten that can't be accommodated into the school, which we're concerned about, and we've had families that applied for pre-K that have been assigned to locations as far as eleven miles away.

And so we can send all I think if we haven't already, we'll send you all the details on those families, but we really hope to be able to work together to add a pre-K classroom and a and a kindergarten classroom at PS31 to try to make sure that local families are accommodated.

And since I've gone over time, my last question is last year we passed a law uh with uh then Chair Joseph's help uh to have the DOE report on the presence of school librarians in our in our schools.

Uh it showed that they're only in 47 out of 657 elementary schools did we have a certified librarian, which gosh, that is just far too many.

I'm a big believer in librarians and the impact they have on literacy outcomes.

The first annual report was due on June 1st.

Do we have any status update on that report um now that we're a week late?

I didn't believe it was submitted today.

Submitted today.

Great news.

I look forward to reading it.

Thank you very much, Chancellor and team.

Appreciate your partnership uh and look forward to working together.

Awesome, thank you.

Avila is followed by uh Zwang.

Great, thank you so much.

Um hello everyone, thank you so much for being here and all the work you do.

I wanted to ask a couple of questions.

I'm sorry, it's like slightly in speed because we've all got to go.

Um, uh about restorative justice.

Our understanding is that um this year uh DOE is funding eight tier one cohorts, um, which is down from 13 last year, down from 30 two years ago.

This seems to be in a very wrong direction.

So can you talk to us about what is happening with restorative justice work?

And then I'd love to hear a little bit more about in 2025, um, the controller put out a report that noted 53% of the New York City um schools did not meet the recommended number of guidance counselors in the buildings.

Um in terms of guidance counselor ratios.

Uh, have we made any progress there in terms of making sure there's enough uh guidance counselors for our students?

Mark.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Good afternoon.

Hi.

I will start.

I will I will get back to you with those cohort numbers in particular.

So can you just repeat the question?

My understanding is that there is eight this year, down from thirteen last year, down from thirty two years ago.

Very wrong direction for restorative justice.

Um, I will try to have that for you before you leave today.

Thank you.

Um, in terms of uh guidance counselors.

I can't hi, Council Amanda.

Hi, I can how are you?

I can speak to the guidance counselor.

So in total, um, New York City Public School as uh per public report that was shared in February, we have a total of 3,296 um guidance counselors in the school system, 3,525 of then are full-time, 41 are part-time.

In terms of the ratio specifically, and with that, I want to be clear that as we know a few years uh years ago, the state changed the requirement for guidance counselors at the elementary school level, making them just this notion of access, but not necessarily with a requirement of a full-time uh uh counselor.

But the current ratio is one to uh two fifty nine to all schools, and then when we look at historically what were the high school grades um, which were the where a full-time person was mandated in the past, is one to one eighty-two schools with high school grades that have a school counselor.

Now, when you add the total of both, uh both when we look at school counselors and social workers, then those ratios change.

So the the ratio then becomes one to one sixty for old school when you look at the combined numbers, and one to one twenty-five um for schools we high school grades.

Okay.

Better, but still not good.

Um we need to do much better.

Um, and I know we're working to get there.

In terms of last question, uh, in the budget, we saw $3.7 billion to charter schools.

How much of that is for rent?

Does DOE have any oversight in terms of those rental payments or any negotiating power in terms of rents and leases?

Uh so for rent for charter schools is over 200 million dollars of that total um amount that you just quoted, and it's all governed by state law.

And and what are the major categories?

So 200 million is rental assistance, and then what is the breakdown of the other major category?

Most tuition and rental payment is it?

Uh, the rental payments should be captured in the lease cost that I just provided to you, but um the bulk of it is tuition for general ed and specialist students and charter schools.

Got it.

And then there's no negotiating power that DOE engages in in terms of rents rental assistance or negotiating leases for schools and new buildings.

Uh, sorry, and just a correction rental assistance is over 300 million, so thank you uh for that, Erin.

Um, I think there's very little there, again, because it is all governed by the state law, but I will defer to uh DC Moran if there's a correction needed there.

Yeah, so exactly.

Uh on the budget side of the 3.5 billion, it includes 340 million in rental assistance, and in terms of rental assistance, we're just following the set policies by law um to reimburse.

Um, so so when a school is placed in an industrial building in an industrial zone on a track uh on a truck route, DOE doesn't engage in any conversations that an educational institution should not be placed.

We're not the charter authorizer in many cases, and so they'll they'll be going through the state or otherwise to get.

Thank you, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Zwang, followed by Krishna.

Thank you, Chair.

And the first of all, not only council member Mercedes.

Me too.

Uh, thank you so much for putting the AC in while my school.

This is uh struggle for a long time, and also I realized SCA, um, in general, uh, when our principal worked with SCA to make sure that no one used the auditorium service, and then SCA told them, Oh, we're gonna do the work there in the summer after the principal reroute all the service in the school, and the SCCA told them, oh, we cannot do the construction in your school anymore.

It's really caused a lot of trouble to parents to school, and I hope that part needs to be improved.

And also, I have another question about immigrant family services.

Over 40% of New York City public school school families speak a language other than English at home.

The DOE's immigration family communication and outreach initiative is four million dollar program that helps immigrant families get important information about their child education through um strategies such as sending paper notice, calling or text families, and the collaborate with immigrants facing CBOs.

Um, the executive plan does not include this funding in fiscal 2027 or the out years.

Can you please talk about um this funding being used in this how this funding be used before?

What this type of will this type of service be cut and then what the school should do?

If they need help.

Thank you for the question, and I'm I'm happy to jump in.

So it is correct, we have um received four million dollars um in support uh from council to be able to support our immigrant language efforts that includes um when you say how it has been used, it has been used to develop the hello app, which allows for automatic language assistance designated to provide real-time interpretation in New York City cover languages to support impron translation uh when needed.

We also have extended um a pilot for five districts to be able to obtain pre-free professional interpretation services uh for families.

So so far, 500 families have attended those events that we have used those funding.

We also, as you mentioned, have partnered with 16 CBOs.

So these are local CBOs in the community that have language expertise to make sure that those uh supports are expanded.

We also have work on the training or uh of our language access allocations coordinators.

So this is relatively new.

Um each school now has a designated language access coordinator, and our office works to bring them together to share resources and to your last question.

I'm looking forward to continue partnering with City Council in this um area because we do without that, uh, those those funds there will be limitation to provide all of those supports that I just mentioned and more.

I also have follow-up question.

Has DOE had a conversation with OMB about extending this funding?

I know that um I'll let my colleague, the chief financial officer, um, share a little bit more on funding, but there has been uh multiple instances where we have highlighted some of the needs around language access and the needs for funding uh from my end.

I can confirm it's a part of our ongoing conversations with OMB.

Okay, I I also want to share an instant happened in my area in 2023.

Actually, it's uh it's an ongoing issue still in my area.

They had multiple, not only just one high school, they had multiple high school principals reach out to me.

They have been um they need assistance to communicate with some newer coming families.

Um, some language is not easy access in the um with school, and also because they are high school students, they think they're adults, they don't let the school communicate with the parents, they don't even they know both languages, the kids doesn't want to translate for the family and the schools, so it's it's very hard for school to communicate with parents, and I have an instance in 2023.

One kid actually gets a shot and a date in my district.

I don't want this type of thing happened.

I want the school have uh frequent communication with especially the immigrant parents.

They don't speak the language, they don't know how to navigate the system.

And I'm a immigrant, I know in different countries, the education is different system.

Yeah, so am I, and I understand that very well as an immigrant myself and somebody who started going in New York City public school as a high school student.

I would also say that schools receive some allocation, so they receive money in their budgets that they can also leverage to enhance the supports beyond the things that I mentioned, but I'm happy if you want to share with me the specific high schools and happy to engage and helping with to support with the team to make sure that our parents um get access to that information uh that you're saying that is is much needed beyond the required language.

So anything that I can do, I understand it, not just from a policy and educational perspective.

I understand the front lived experience.

Okay, so we'll definitely follow up with anything that you need, I'm here.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Krishna, followed by Gutierrez.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Good to see you all and Chancellor and the uh bilingual education team.

I want to thank you all for coming out with me to one of our programs at a school at Jackson Heights, and I appreciate uh the uh department's commitment to bilingual education.

Um I have a few uh a couple questions on a couple different topics, but the first one is I know we talked a lot about class size, uh, um, the class size reduction plan um and and you know getting to there eventually.

I just had one question.

I know in in December 2023, the class-sized working group had come out with some recommendations of what are ways to find and figure out smaller class size spaces or different ways.

Has the DOE taken a look at that?

Um, are you guys considering those recommendations?

How is that going?

Yeah, absolutely.

We took a look at that in both in practice uh and and consideration.

Um most recently we as we said, we are looking at non-capital as well as capital investment, those non-capitals uh and it consider um what are what's the utilization of our current buildings and where that is, and those are recommendations that came from the uh working group that you're you're you're talking about.

But so yes, we have definitely looked closely at it, work shoulder to shoulder with SCA as well as partners across DOE to consider some of the factors there.

Um Erin, I don't know if you want to add anything there.

Yes, thank you, Chancellor.

Thank you for the question.

Um we we are considering that as the Chancellor said, our our capital plan and um approach to finding more space takes into account some things, including for um, for example, like looking at shared space in buildings and these non-capital approaches that were identified by the by the class size working group um in 2023, and I think we're continuing to reflect on um what they shared then and um and and again as we release the class size reduction plan, I think we'll see that there's evidence of of our consideration in the plan.

Great, thank you.

And then shifting gears completely to another topic that's more and more of concern on my mind, um, is the presence uh and reliance of screens um in schools, especially for elementary school students.

I know Chancellor, you and I've had a conversation about that, and uh we're both committed to to working together to address that issue.

Um, it's just you know a number, and I want to focus on elementary school kids in particular.

Obviously, there's discussions that we have middle school and high school, but between you know uh the the Chromebooks, um, you know, programs like Savas or uh iReady tests and things like that, there's just a lot of, and it's and it's a city issue, but it's also a national issue of the amount of screen times, especially since the pandemic that kids are spending in the classroom and at home um on screens.

And I'm already negotiating with my kids over PlayStation time and TV time and everything, and this is now one more thing I wanted to add to the negotiation list with them.

So, you know, there are a lot of contracts that DOE has with um ed tech vendors, I guess I'd call them.

Um, and I'm just curious how DOE is monitoring um the the funding uh that goes towards those contracts and the effectiveness of of funding those contracts at those levels.

And how do how do you all keep an eye on those things?

Yeah, that is such a great question, and as someone who has um young kids as well, is something I'm super concerned about in thinking about screen time and and what that means for our school system.

We are having those discussions as we continue to hear feedback on our policies.

Um when we think about um ed tech uh uh resources and ed tech tools that are being used in schools.

We recently did uh a survey of our principles to kind of get a sense of what what's happening.

We look we're looking at um, you know, multiple opportunities to think through how we can begin to uh uh or accelerate uh assessing the effectiveness of those tools, um, but and and as a part of our broader technology strategy in general, and I think more to come on that, but that's something that we are looking really seriously at.

Glad to hear it and look forward to continuing conversations on those issues too.

Thank you.

Great council member Gutierrez.

Thank you.

Good to see everyone.

What time is it?

3 20.

Oh, it's early, everybody.

Um, okay.

I have a few questions.

I'm gonna focus obviously on on early childhood education, although I do have maybe like two other questions for everybody else.

Um, so first I just want to start.

Um, I just wanted to see if um Deputy Chancellor, you wanted to expand.

I know Speaker Menon had asked on the pay parity.

I thought I felt really encouraged by you referring to it as compensation parity and really wanting to look at um benefits.

Is there anything else that you can expand on that?

I know we've spoken at length every every um time we we have a hearing, we have a number of people come and testify.

It still seems to be the biggest issue for folks to really buy into expand to get to universal child care, and as you know, we're working really hard on trying to get more people to want to pursue a career in this.

So is there anything that you can expand right now on kind of how you're how you're looking at or how you're even thinking about beginning those conversations?

Because I I understand it's layered.

I appreciate that, um, council member, and you know, nothing to share that would be any less than kind of a non-update, and I really want to be thoughtful about giving you something with substance, but please know, you know, as a as a black woman and knowing that this specific sector is comprised of underpaid women of color, this is something we take very seriously, and the administration has been and the mayor himself has been very clear about taking this on firsthand.

And so we're looking at the pay structure, right?

We need to clearly define what equity is, understanding the nuances across the sector, and then the part around just health coverage and insurance.

You know, some of the things we're looking at is the cost of insurance, right?

And so nothing again substantial to share right now, but it is something we're taking very seriously.

Excellent, excellent.

Um, and is there any kind of time frame where you think they'll you'll be able to kind of come back and just kind of share anything on it again?

I get that it's layered, I get that it's complicated, I get that, I get that getting data even is is difficult.

So, kind of what's your timeline?

Yeah, yesterday would have been nice, right?

And I think we all want that.

But I, you know, what I can agree with, we I will confer with um our colleague Emmy Liss because that's something we have to do and develop together, and we'll get back to you on what the timeline could be.

Okay, well, I uh look forward to continuing those conversations and encourage for folks that are here or will be testifying this week just to continue to hold us all accountable because we all want to get there.

Um okay, I'm gonna ask some questions about 3K that I think at the prelim were not shared.

Is there a current uh 3K utilization rate that you all have that you can share?

Yes, and so the utilization for 3K is 85 percent, um, and that is for about 52,000 seats.

And then do you have one for pre-K as well?

Yes, that is 80% for about 69,000 seats.

Um 69.

69.

Okay.

And can you share at this time current enrollment for 3K and pre-K?

So it's that utilization rate.

So it would be that's what the current enrollment is.

Yeah, okay.

Exactly.

Okay.

Um, and then I wanted to ask, is there anything I know all of the um the assignments went out?

That's not the right word, but you know what I mean.

The offers, the offers.

I got you.

Okay.

I'm in the trenches too.

I don't know why I'm um can you share a little bit about I don't know if it's now okay for you to share kind of like the amount of families that were able to get first, second, third pick, any of any of that data that you can share now.

Yeah, I know it's recent, but for 3K and pre-K.

We got approval from our colleagues in the office of student enrollment, and so um one thing we're very proud about.

We did it last year for this current school year, and we're doing it now for the upcoming school year, is you know, any family who did apply by the the application deadline received an offer.

So 100% offers were given to families who applied.

That's great.

Um, and so across 3K and pre-K, there are about a hundred thousand applications with about 57,000.

Um, and actually let me take a step back.

There were about 100 applications, and then offers exceed the number of applicants because sometimes we manually place students, and so for the office of 3K, um, it was about 57,000, 56, 838, and then for pre-K, we extended 43,083 offers.

And of those, um, is specifically for I think this is 3K specifically, and I'll get back to you, council member on the first, second, third choice for pre-K.

But 3K, you know, this it's we are trying to get to universal.

Um, and so those numbers around priority placement or placements based on the priority and preferences.

So 70% of families receive their top choice, 84% receive one of their top three choices, and eighty-eight percent received a choice on their application.

88% received a choice on the application.

And for the 12% that maybe received offer that they haven't, they've they've never heard of what recourse do they have.

We encourage people to like, you know, sign up to the waiting list, add your name, but what kind of how are you moving along that 12%?

Because I think those parents are often the most vocal, right?

They're like, I live in Crown Heights, I don't know why I'm expected to go to, I don't know.

I'm making this up, but like Bushwick, let's just say.

Yeah.

For whatever reason.

How are you all kind of working through through that and those placements?

So a few things, and so thanks to you know, the motivating factor that you all have at just encouraging us and holding us accountable, the investments from the administration and the governor around just creating new seats, right?

And so that's helpful in creating placements closer to home or work, wherever the preferences of that family.

And so we've gotten the distance down significantly for the upcoming year.

About 0.8 miles, we actually decrease the distance of placements, and I think that is worth celebrating.

Now, this might be a provocative statement around the 12%.

There is no part of our system where 100% of families get their choice, right?

I'm a parent who just went through the high school application process and I had to wipe some tears and give some hugs because she did not necessarily get into one of her top choices.

And so I really wanna be clear that we have to level set expectations.

But we always want families to be within a reasonable distance of travel.

And so again, it's going back to investing and placing seats and creating a more flexible system where our community members, may they be CBO, schools, family child care homes, can offer care based on community need and not be limited, families not be limited to where need is placed.

And so we are trying to infuse the system in ways that are thoughtful to create that flexibility.

So it does take some investment, but it also takes some nimbleness in the contract.

Yeah, and I understand that.

I think the instances that are being brought up to us and to my colleagues are ones where you know 3K and pre-K doesn't work the same way as K-12, and we have zone schools and we have schools that we know will take us.

These are instances where parents are like, I don't the school is a train right away, right?

These are the extreme cases that I'm referring to.

And in those instances, no parent is not flexible because they realize they've engaged in a process that's for the most part still kind of up in the air.

It's those specific instances that I'm referring to where people are being, you know, having to travel a lot further than 0.8, which I think is wonderful.

So I want to give you off your flowers, I think that's important.

But I'm talking about these extreme situations, which are common.

Um, okay, great.