Enhances parental and community input into the NYC school system, provides for review of procurement policies and contracts; appropriation; repealer

Section 1: Adds a city-wide council on English Language Learners and high schools in addition to the current city-wide council on special education.

Makes the Chancellor an ex-officio, non-voting member of the Board and adds a Mayoral appointee as a replacement.

Requires the City Board to elect their own Chair.

Establishes a two-year term for Board appointees.

Prohibits City Board appointees from being members, officers, or employees of any public corporation, authority, or commission where the Mayor has a majority of the appointments.

Requires two of the Mayoral appointees to be parents of a child attending a public school within the district. Parent members can be eligible to continue to serve for two years following the conclusion of their child's attendance at a district public school. Requires that one of the Mayoral parent appointees be the parent of a student receiving special education services.

Requires the appointing authority to fill a vacancy within ninety days.

Requires the City Board to meet at least once a month and requires one hearing per year in each Borough. Additional meetings can be called by the Chair.

Requires the City Board to consider appropriate public accommodations when selecting a venue to maximize participation by parents and the community.

Requires the City Board to provide notice of time, place and the agenda for all meetings on the website and circulated to all community superintendents, community district education councils, community boards, and school based management teams at least ten business days in advance of the meeting.

Requires the Board agendas to be comprised of a list and brief description of the subject matter being considered, identification of all items subject to a City Board vote, and the name, office, address, email address and telephone number of a city district representative, knowledgeable on the agenda, from whom any information may be obtained and to whom written comments may be submitted about such agenda item.

Requires the Chair ensure that there is sufficient time to allow for public comment on any topic prior to a vote.

Requires minutes of all meetings to be publicly available and on the internet prior to the next Board meeting.

Alters the makeup of the city-wide council on special education by requiring the nine voting parent members to be the parent of a child with an individual education plan (IEP) instead of a child attending a District 75 school. (This expands the pool of potential members to parents of all special education students, not just special education students attending District 75 schools.)

Allows the non-voting member of the City wide special education council to be the parent of a high school senior with an IEP.

Authorizes the Public Advocate to appoint a replacement to serve out the remainder of the unexpired term on the City-wide Special Education Council if the Advocate's appointee vacates their position prior to the term's expiration.

Establishes the City-Wide Council on English Language Learners to be comprised of eleven voting members and one non-voting member. Nine voting members must be parents of students who are in a bilingual or ELL program. The Chancellor shall establish regulations allowing parents of ELL students to elect voting members for a two-year term. Two voting members with extensive experience with ELL issues are to be appointed by the Public Advocate. Requires the Chancellor to designate an administrator to select a non-voting member for a one year term. The appointee must be a high school senior who has is or has been enrolled in a bilingual or ESL programs.

Grants the city-wide council on ELL the power to: * Advise and comment on any education or instructional policy involving bilingual or English as a second language programs; * Issue an annual report on the effectiveness of services for ELL students * Hold at least one open, public meeting per month. * Requires the Chancellor to develop a process for filling vacancies.

Creates the City-wide Council on High Schools with thirteen voting members and one nonvoting member. Ten members must be parents of students attending public high schools. Two members from each borough must be selected by presidents and officers of the parents associations or parent-teachers' associations in the relevant borough, pursuant to a process established by the Chancellor. Each member will serve a two-year term. One member must be the parent of a child with an IEP and will be appointed by the City-wide Council on special education. One voting members must be a parent of an ELL student and will be appointed by the City-wide Council on special education. One member will be appointed by the Public Advocate for a two year term and must be a City resident with extensive business, trade, or education experience. One, non-voting member must be a high school senior appointed for a one-year term pursuant to Chancellor's regulations.

The high school council will have the power to: * Advise and comment on any educational or instructional policy involving high schools; * Issue an annual report on the effectiveness of the school system and make; recommendations on how to improve the system; and * Hold at least one meeting per month that must be open to the public.

Creates a City-wide Council on the Arts to focus on arts education in the school district with thirteen voting members and one non-voting member.

Authorizes each City-wide council to appoint a secretary to perform the following functions: * Prepare meeting notices, agendas and minutes; * Record and maintain accounts of proceedings; and * Prepare briefing materials and other related information for meetings.

Prohibits a member of a City-wide council from serving on more than once council, including a community district education council.

Prohibits a member of a city-wide council from being employed by any City-wide council, community district education council, or the City Board.

Prohibits elected officials, members of county political committees, and convicted felons or previously removed persons from serving on City-wide boards.

Prohibits people from serving if they have committed an act of malfeasance directly related to service on a City-wide board or community district education councilor if convicted of any crime relating to board service. prohibits people from serving if they miss more than three meetings without a valid reason.

Section 2: Expands the pool of community district education council members by allowing parents to serve for two years after having a child in a school within the district.

Prohibits officers of parent or parent-teacher associations who are candidates for community education councils from voting in such elections and allows the association to pick a replacement voter.

Authorizes parent members of PTA's and Parent Associations to vote for CEC members instead of just PTA and PA officers.

Clarifies that a member of a community district education council cannot also serve on a citywide council.

Requires the CEC to ensure that vacancies do not eliminate the ELL or special education parent by requiring that the replacement meet the same criteria.

Clarifies that vacancies of a position appointed by the Borough president do not require consultation with other groups before the Borough president can appoint a replacement.

Eliminates the prohibition against officers from parent or parent-teacher association's from serving on a CEC board.

Section 3: Requires the Chancellor to alter the City Board's by-laws to allow for any board member to place an item on the Board's agenda. Requires the Board's by-laws to be posted on the internet.

Section 4: Requires that Community District Education Councils be consulted on the selection of district superintendents.

Requires Community District Education Councils to hold joint public hearings with the chancellor or his designee on school closings or "significant change(s) in school utilization," including phase-outs, grade reconfiguration, re-siting, or co-location of schools.

Section 5: Clarifies that Community Superintendents must exercise their powers and duties in a manner to ensure the implementation of all provisions of law.

Specifies that the superintendent may delegate duties at his/her sole discretion.

Requires superintendents to receive input from a screening committee (parents, teachers, staff) consistent with regulations to be promulgated by the chancellor before making supervisory appointments.

Requires that parents and staff must be involved in recruiting, screening, interviewing and recommendation of candidates for principals and assistant principals and requires the Chancellor to establish minimum qualifications.

Requires superintendents to supervise and evaluate principals. One added criteria in the evaluations is whether or not he/she has developed an effective shared decision making relationship with school management teams. Specifies that the superintendent must have access to necessary school records, and shall consider school management teams' comments.

Specifies that the superintendent can only approve the school based budget after certifying that such budget is aligned with the school's comprehensive education plan. Requires principals to submit written justification to demonstrate that the school based budget is aligned with the comprehensive education plan and authorizes school management team to respond to said justification.

Authorizes school based management teams to dispute a decision made by a principal where the team believes that the principal's decision is not aligned with the schools comprehensive education plan.

Requires the district superintendent to provide direct support to parents whose concerns cannot be resolved at the school level.

Requires the community superintendent to establish a fully staffed district office to address parent issues and complaints.

Requires the superintendent to hold at least two public forums each school year to report on district progress made achieving district comprehensive education plan goals, discuss plans for improvements, and receive parent concerns. The forums must be properly noticed to the stakeholders including the school based management teams, community district education councils and community boards.

Requires the district superintendent to provide public notice of any proposed school closing or significant change in school utilization, including phase-out, grade reconfiguration, re-sitting, or co-location of schools.

Requires the Chancellor to ensure that the superintendent are working on issues within his/her district.

Section 6: Requires the City Board to approve Chancellor's regulations, the capital plan, and annual estimates of the operational and capital budget.

Requires the City Board to approve the allocation of projected revenues among community districts and local schools and to approve the aggregation of the community district budgets with a proposed budget for administrative expenses following a public hearing.

Requires the City Board to approve a procurement policy and any subsequent amendments.

Requires the City Board to approve proposals for school closings or significant changes in school utilization, including phase-outs, grade reconfiguration, re-siting, or co-location of schools, following a public hearing.

Requires the City Board to adopt an employee recruitment policy that considers the diversity of the city's schools. The policy will be proposed by the chancellor, who will also issue an annual report on the diversity initiatives. The city board will hold a public meeting to review the report.

Requires the City Board to approve any contract that was not competitively bid, including sole source contracts, technical, consultant or personal service contracts, where the value of the contract is over $1 million, or any contract "awarded to a single entity" the value of which is more than $1 million annually.

Requires the City Board to approve all franchises, revocable consents, and concessions awarded by the district.

Requires the City Board to approve the city board's bylaws.

Requires that any item requiring City Board approval to be done by a public vote at a public meeting.

Requires the City Board to undertake a public review process with public notice and public comments prior to approval of any item requiring City Board approval. Notice must contain a description of the subject, purpose and substance of the proposal under consideration, the contact information of the public official knowledgeable of the proposal, the date, time and place of the public meeting, and information on how to submit public comments. In the event that there is a revision of the proposal after such notice is given, the city board must submit a revised public notice at least 15 days in advance of the public hearing on the revised proposal.

Following the above public hearing process, but prior to submitting a vote, the city board must make all public comments available to the public. The publication of the comments must include the issues raised by the public, any changes made to the proposal following the public comments, or an explanation of why any public suggestions were not incorporated.

In the event that the city board or the chancellor determines that a proposal requires immediate adoption, the city board may adopt such on an emergency basis. The city board or chancellor must submit written justification to the public.

Requires the City Board to respond to recommendations made in the annual reports issued by the city-wide council on special education, the city-wide council on ELL and the city-wide council on high schools. Such response must be made in a public meeting.

Requires the City Board to conduct an annual survey of parents, teachers, and school personnel to evaluate the city board and the chancellor on the issues of city-wide school resources, oversight, and curriculum. The results of the survey shall be publicly available.

Requires the City Board to provide information, data, estimates and statistics to the IBO or city comptroller in a timely fashion.

Section 7: Prohibits the Commissioner of Education from waiving the education qualifications for any Chancellor appointed after June 30, 2009. Future Chancellors would be required to attain the same certification as a superintendent.

Requires the Chancellor to prepare an educational impact statement regarding any proposed school closing or significant change in school utilization including phase-out, grade reconfiguration, re-siting, or co-location of a school.

Such impact statement must include the following: * The current and projected pupil enrollment, the prospective need for such a building, the ramifications of closing the school on the community and any cost savings to be had and any other uses for the school; * The impact of any change on students, including English language learners and students with individualized education plans; * An outline of any proposed or potential use of the building for other programs or administrative services; * The type, age, and physical condition of the school building; * The ability of other schools to accommodate pupils following the school closure or significant change; and * Information regarding the school's academic performance including any listing on accountability watch lists.

Requires the Chancellor to hold a public hearing between thirty and forty-five days of filing the educational impact statement of a school utilization change.

Authorizes the Chancellor to revise a proposal after a hearing and hold a joint hearing with the community council and school based management team.

Prohibits school closings or significant changes in the same school year they are proposed unless the changes are for health or safety reasons. Emergency closures or changes can only last six months without an educational impact statement and hearings taking place.

Expands the powers of the school based management teams to require them to consult on school based budgets and submit their comments along with the principals proposals to the community superintendent. In cases where a school is not under the jurisdiction of a community superintendent, the school based management team can submit comments directly to the Chancellor.

Requires that the school based management teams be consulted prior to the appointment of any principal candidate.

Requires the Chancellor to dispute any school budget decisions made by a principal to the community superintendent where members of the school based management team, other than the principal, reach a consensus that the decision is not consistent with the school's existing comprehensive educational plan.

Requires the Chancellor to provide the community superintendent with an annual assessment of the principal's record of developing an effective shared decision-making relationship with the school based management team members.

Requires the Chancellor to promulgate regulations establishing a plan for providing access to school facilities. Requires the Chancellor to consult with the corresponding community district education council when appointing community superintendents.

Requires the Chancellor to create a procurement policy that includes purchases made by community districts and the system. Such policy must specifically include: * A process for sealed competitive bids that are awarded to the lowest, responsible bidder. * A process for awarding contracts when competitive sealed bid will not produce the best results. When doing non-sealed bids, the regulations must include measures to enhance the ability of minority and women owned business enterprises to compete for contracts; the manner for administering and overseeing the performance of contracts and contractors; standards and procedures to be used in determining whether bidders are responsible; circumstances under which procurement may be used for technical, consultant, or personal services; requiring written justification for the basis, including the efficiency benefit, and necessity for awarding non-sealed competitive bids and sole source contracts; maintaining a file for every contract that is to be open for public inspection with adequate protections for confidential information, a process for filing all contracts with the City Comptroller; and a procedure to resolve contract disputes.

Requires the Chancellor to certify that all criteria have been met for awarding any contract and that the district has legal authority to award such contract or agreement.

Prohibits a contract from taking effect until a copy has been on tile with the City Comptroller for the lesser of thirty days or when registered by the Comptroller.

Requires the Comptroller to register contracts within thirty days unless he/she believes there are no funds available to cover the obligation, the Chancellor has not certified the district has legal authority enter into the contract, the vendor has been debarred by the City, or if the Comptroller believes there was corruption in the awarding process.

Requires procurement policies to allow the Comptroller to object to a contract in writing if they believe corruption was involved. Such objections must be delivered to the Mayor setting forth reasons why they think corruption is involved. The Mayor may require the contract to go forward but must specify the corrective actions that will or have been taken or why the Mayor disagrees with the Comptroller.

Exempts emergency contracts from bidding, but not post award disclosure rules.

Requires the Chancellor to hold a public meeting in each community school district at least once every two years to report on student performance and respond to public concerns.

Requires the Chancellor to provide necessary data to the Independent Budget Office in a timely manner.

Requires the Chancellor to issue an annual report on the participation of minority and women owned business enterprises in district contracting.

Requires the Chancellor to propose a policy that promotes the recruitment and retention of a workforce in the city district, community district and school level that considers the diversity of the students.

Section 8: Requires the principal to consult with the school based management team prior to taking action on expenditures. Requires the Chancellor to consult with the school based management team prior to appointing a principal if a school is not under the jurisdiction of a community superintendent.

Section 9: Requires the Chancellor to follow notification procedures on space utilization prior to submitting the five-year capital plan to the Board for approval.

Section 10: Makes technical corrections to the budget approval process to conform with current law. Clarifies that the principal must consult with the school based management team prior to submitting a budget. Requires the principal to provide a written document demonstrating that the school's proposed budget is aligned with the school's comprehensive education plan. Requires the school based management team to submit written comments to the community superintendent regarding the principals declaration about the proposed budget. Requires the Chancellor to certify that the school based budget meets the education plan after reviewing documents submitted by the principal and the school based leadership team.

Section 11: Grants the New York City Comptroller the authority to conduct operational and programmatic audits of the New York City School District and School Construction Authority just as any City agency.

Authorizes the New York City Independent Budget Office to provide analysis and issue public reports regarding financial and educational matters of the district including: student graduation and dropout data; student enrollment projections; school utilization, class sizes and pupil-to-teacher ratios; student assessment data; the delivery of services to ESL and bilingual students; the delivery of services to students with disabilities; and the utilization of federal funds.

Requires the City to provide the IBO with an additional 2.5% of the appropriations available to pay for the expenses of the IBO to carry out the additional responsibilities.

Authorizes the director of the IBO to secure necessary information from the City Board and Chancellor in a timely manner. Exempts legal communications. Requires the director of the IBO to ensure that they use up-to-date and appropriate methodologies to produce the reports and to identify which methodologies were used.

Establishes an independent parent organization and a Parent Academy to train parents. Requires the Public Advocate to promulgate necessary voting regulations to select a Board of Directors. Requires the City Department of Education to provide $25 million per year for operations.

Section 12: Specifies that parent associations and parent-teacher associations can use school facilities.

Sections 13 and 14: Extends the School Construction authority's wicks law exemption until June 30, 2014.

Section 15: Establishes a sunset date of June 30, 2015.

Section 16: Clarifies that the Commissioner of Education can remove the New York City Chancellor if the Chancellor is found to have willingly violated a law or regulation.

Section 17: Create a Temporary Commission on School Safety. The commission will examine, evaluate and make recommendations concerning the impact that the current Chancellor's regulations and the New York police department have on student safety, welfare and achievement. The Commission will address: * The impact police and school safety officers have had on student achievement and a safe learning environment; * The method the number and placement of school safety and police officers are determined; * The impact of law enforcement presence and activities on student rights and emotional welfare; * The appropriateness of the Chancellor's current regulations; and · Ways community superintendents, principals and law enforcement can work in a collaborative manner to improve law enforcement practices on school grounds.

The commission will be comprised of eleven members appointed by the Chancellor of schools, the New York City Police Commissioner, the Speaker of the New York City Council, the New York City Public Advocate, the teachers' union, the school supervisors, and one parent appointee by each Borough President. The commission will hold public hearings in each borough to solicit input from students, parents, law enforcement, and community organizations. The commission shall make a report and recommendations to the Chancellor, the city board of education, the New York City Police Department, the Mayor, the Speaker of the City Council, the state Commissioner of Education, and the Chair and Ranking member of the state Senate and Assembly education committees. The Commission and terminates the Commission on June 30, 2010 and would receive $100,000 of state funds to cover expenses.

Section 18: The authority shall provide to the New York city independent budget office such information, data, estimates and statistics as the director determines to be necessary for the performance of the functions and duties of such office, in a timely fashion, and in the form which the director deems most appropriate. The director of the independent budget office of the city of New York shall not be entitled to obtain records which are protected by the privileges for attorney client communications, attorney work product, and material prepared for litigation.

Section 19: Contains the severability clause.

Section 20: Makes the bill effective as of June 30, 2009.

Justification

In 2002, the legislature granted the Mayor of New York City unprecedented authority to oversee the New York City School system to help correct an ineffective and inefficient management structure. The current governance structure corrected many of the problems associated with the previous structure including diluted lines of accountability, a revolving door of Chancellors, and the inability for the school district leaders to make controversial decisions and implement meaningful changes in district operations.

Unfortunately, the implementation of the current law resulted in many parents and community members believing that they had little or no input into school district decisions that impacted their children and the community. In addition, many parents feel they are unable to have their grievances addressed in a timely, meaningful manner once they find an individual with the authority to resolve concerns.

Furthermore, many New York City residents do not have confidence in the procurement and data analysis practices currently being utilized by the New York City Department of Education. Concerns over no-bid contracts and the appropriate use of consultants were consistent themes voiced during numerous public hearings and countless meetings between constituents and their state representatives.

This legislation attempts to strike a balance between maintaining the leadership stability necessary to make and implement difficult decisions while simultaneously enhancing the ability of parents to provide input and have their grievances addressed in a meaningful way.

Prior legislative history

This is a new bill.

Fiscal impact

The legislation requires the New York City Department of Education to provide $25 million annually to help support an independent parent organization. The State would provide $100,000 to support the Temporary Commission on School Safety.

EFFECTIVE DATE Immediately.