The PTSA/PTA presidents of Irvington, Ardsley, Dobbs Ferry, and Hastings-on-Hudson have written an open letter to residents of those communities that will be published in the next issue of The Enterprise.  The letter addresses concerns with education decisions being made at the state level, and how those decisions are negatively impacting students.

Please read the letter here: Letter from PTSA Presidents or below, then please take a moment to sign the petition at http://irvptsa.org.



Dear Editor,

Our villages of Ardsley, Dobbs Ferry, Hastings on Hudson, and Irvington, are in large part defined by the high quality education provided by our public schools. As many are aware, the education landscape in our state has shifted dramatically over the last five years. Underfunded state mandates, over-testing and a redirection of our state taxes dedicated to education have had huge impacts on our local public school system.

As the presidents of our four villages' Parent Teacher Associations, we want to draw your attention to two major concerns occurring at the state level and ask you to join our letter writing campaign to address these critical issues.

The first issue has to do with fully restoring state aid to NY public schools. In the midst of the recent recession and a gap in New York State budget, millions of dollars of tax money that was previously dedicated to education was instead redirected to the state overall budget. This maneuver, called the Gap Elimination Adjustment (GEA), was used to avoid a budget shortfall.  Now as the Governor prepares a new state budget to be announced in January, the state has a projected $5 billion surplus. Many interest groups will lay claim to that money, but it should be restored to our students.  Furthermore, in light of the budget surplus, the GEA should be eliminated in future budget considerations.

The second issue is about over-testing our kids. Currently, our students face many hours of state tests. Now the state wants to add more. The state is considering mandated stand-alone tests for our students with the sole purpose of trying out potential questions for future state tests.  We do not believe that Pearson, the test development company already paid over $30 million by New York state, should shift the company's research and development onto the backs of our students. We want to send a strong message to the NY State Regents to vote against mandating NY school districts to give unnecessary field tests to students.

We believe that collectively we can make a strong impact, but we need your help. Please go to irvptsa.org to sign a letter to Governor Cuomo and our state legislators or email him at gov.cuomo@chamber.state.ny.us

Thank you,

• Allison Waguespack & Shari Wels, Co-Presidents, Irvington PTSA
  
• Christine Ginsberg & Deborah Pence, Co-Presidents Ardsley PTA
  
• Shannon Johnson Dobbs Ferry PTSA President 
  
• Mary McNamara Dobbs Ferry PTSA President Elect
  
• Lisa Eggert Litvin & Jacqueline Weitzman, Co-Presidents, Hastings-on-Hudson PTSA

Recently our Irvington 3rd - 8th grade students took the new New York State mandated English Language Arts (ELA) and math exams. We are very concerned by widespread reports of deep flaws in these new tests, including testing above grade level, tests that are far too long, and the promotion of specific commercial products or brands.

Despite these reported flaws, the state refuses to release the full tests for public review. The state imposed restrictions on teachers and administrators, threatening harsh consequences if they speak about the specifics of the tests. (For example: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/10/opinion/the-problem-with-the-common-core.html? _r=0.)

With the tests kept from the public, these challenges cannot be addressed and resolved. On a more basic level, parents cannot even request that a child's test be checked for scoring accuracy. Frankly, the State Education Department (SED) is avoiding any effort to be transparent regarding the NYS testing. Our children are therefore risk being victims of potentially unjust assessments that could have negative impacts on them and on our school district.

These tests have serious consequences: they may impact whether a child receives AIS (Academic Intervention Services) and whether our teachers can retain their jobs. The tests also determine whether a school is deemed to be performing poorly, which can affect funding to our school district.

This last consequence can also reduce property values since a poor school rating can make a town less desirable to new buyers.

Until 2011, complete ELA and math tests were all routinely made public, with the full tests and scoring keys posted on the state's website, nysedregents.org. 

Now only a small percentage of questions, selected by the state, are released. Withholding this critical information limits parents' understanding of their child's results and hinders teachers' ability to assess how they can support their students’ growth. 

If you agree that full transparency should be reinstated and that the tests should be made fully public again, please click here and sign the form letter. The letter will then automatically be sent to the following government leaders: 

Governor Andrew Cuomo

gov.cuomo@chamber.state.ny.us

Commissioner of Education John King

jking@mail.nysed.gov,

Board of Regents

RegentsOffice@mail.nysed.gov

Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch

RegentTisch@mail.nysed.gov

Our State Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins

scousins@nysenate.gov. 

State Senator & Chair of Education Committee John Flanagan

flanagan@nysenate.gov

State Senator Jeffrey Klein

jdklein@senate.state.ny.us

State Senator Kenneth LaValle

lavalle@nysenate.gov

State Senator Dean Skelos

skelos@nysenate.gov

Our Assemblyman Tom Abinanti

abinantit@assembly.state.ny.us

Assemblywoman & Chair of Education Committee Catherine Nolan

nolanc@assembly.state.ny.us

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver

speaker@assembly.state.ny.us

Thank you! 

“Runaway Reform: State of Public Education in New York State”

Thursday, January 23 at 7:00 pm, 
Ardsley Middle School Auditorium

Please come hear our exciting panel of Public Education Advocates talk about recent education reforms, the impact on our students and our schools, and actions you can take as a concerned parent, community member and tax-payer.  

The New York Suburban Consortium for Public Education (formerly the Lower Westchester Education Consortium) and the New York State Allies for Public Education are very proud to present:
Dr. Kenneth Mitchell is the President of the Lower Hudson Council of School Superintendents. Dr. Mitchell has been chairman of the group’s committee studying unfunded mandates (the many state rules and regulations that force school districts to raise and spend property taxes). Last year, Dr, Mitchell wrote a comprehensive paper for the Center for Research, Regional Education and Outreach at SUNY New Paltz that broke out the costs of the new reforms for public school districts. He’s been a strong voice of caution regarding the many reforms now changing the shape of public education in NY State, including the teacher-evaluation system, the new tests tied to the Common Core learning standards, and the planned on-line state tests.  
Dr.Carol Burris is the Principal of South Side High School in New York. Dr Burris’s columns appear regularly on The Answer Sheet, a public education blog for The Washington Post.  She was named New York’s 2013 High School Principal of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York and the National Association of Secondary School Principals and, in 2010, was tapped as the New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State. She is the co-author of the NY Principals’ letter of concern, signed by over 1,535 principals in our state, regarding the evaluation of teachers by student test scores. 

Leonie Haimson is Executive Director of Class Size Matters, a non-profit parent advocacy group working for smaller class sizes in NYC and the nation as a whole.  She was a public school parent for 15 years, co-founded Parents Across America, and is a board member of the Network for Public Education, a national organization started by Diane Ravitch.   She led the first advocacy group in the nation to sound the alarm about inBloom’s plan to create a multi-state database to be stored on a vulnerable data cloud and has been called “the nation’s foremost parent expert on inBloom and the current threat to student data privacy.”   
Bianca Tanis is a Hudson Valley parent and educator.  As a parent of a child with a disability and a special education teacher, she is particularly concerned about the devastating effects that the current education reforms have on students with disabilities. Bianca Tanis holds a Bachelor’s degree in anthropology and Master's degrees in elementary and special education. She currently works as an elementary school special education teacher and is a co-founder of the advocacy group New York State Allies for Public Education.
Please RSVP on Facebook: Runaway Reform: State of Public Education in New York State.

Education Committee Hearings
Senator John Flanagan (2nd Senate District), Chairman of the New York State Senate Standing Committee on Education, announced that the Education Committee will be holding a series of hearings to review the impact and effectiveness of recent state education reforms.

The hearings will be held throughout the State at the beginning of the school year with the first to be held on Long Island in September.  Following that meeting, Senator Flanagan will convene additional meetings in central and upstate New York and New York City.  For more information on this topic, go to http://www.nysenate.gov/committee/education.