11.19.19 Top 5 Takeaways from CEC Meeting on PAR Process

To view this full livestream click here.

School-related meetings, though they’re public, aren’t necessarily accessible for all families, who for a variety of reasons are unable to show up in person.

This is why I’ve decided to begin live streaming the CEC meetings, as a part of a year-long project to bring the current education conversation to families in Red Hook, who have often felt left out. You can read more about my project, RedConnect, on this website.

Caveat: This was my very first livestream, meaning that there were of course, technical difficulties. Due to the fact that no microphones were working at this meeting, the video pictured above a bit hard to hear. But, have no fear, the most pertinent parts of the meeting are described below, and there’s a meeting minutes transcript in the description of the livestream video on Youtube.

Here are the top five takeaways from this meeting:

1. DOE Debunks Myths Around the Lottery System

At the meeting, a Department of Education representative from the Office of Student Enrollment debunked the myths around the waiting list number parents receive when applying to middle schools under the new diversity plan in District 15. Here’s what you need to know:

Parents were wondering, how does this number get determined? What does it mean? Is there any way to get a higher number?

According to the DOE enrollment team, schools set their own admissions processes to best suit their school community. Some schools rank students based on test scores or screen students for certain academic qualifications. But, in District 15 middle schools the priority is given to students who come from low-income backgrounds, are English-language learners, or students living in temporary housing for about half of the seats.

So, things get a little sticky when students applying to the same middle school have the same priority. For example, 100 students want to go to the same school, but the school only has 50 seats. If these students all have the same qualifications, which 50 students get accepted out of 100?

According to the DOE representative, this is a random selection — some people call it a lottery. A number is generated from a computer which determines your “number in line.” This is not a ranking of students, but rather an order that lets parents know where their student is on the waiting list. The order will be different at every school but a student’s random number does not change.

The best thing a parent can do when applying is to rank their school choices in their true order of preference. Putting schools out of order on the application is never a good idea and you will not “game the system” this way.

More information on the application process and some recent updates can be found in a Chalkbeat article, here.

2. What is Participatory Action Research? (PAR)

In response to families who felt that more affluent families were overrepresented at meetings about rezoning earlier this year, school officials will launch an engagement process called Participatory Action Research, or PAR, that relies on small group interactions, such as canvassing or one-on-one conversations led by people living in the community.

In short, this PAR process is a community driven approach to gathering information which will be used to inform how the DOE can better engage with communities. The DOE will be consulting the community to figure out what methods and approaches will actually be useful in affecting change for these communities.

Outside of this realm, PAR can be defined it as a “collaborative research, education and action used to gather information to use for change on social or environmental issues” (Durham University). PAR involves people who are concerned about or affected by an issue taking a leading role in producing and using knowledge about it.

This PAR process will build on the knowledge and experiences of community members to inform DOE and CEC about what’s most important to them.

Here’s a PAR toolkit if you want to read more about it.

3. Update on where the DOE is with PAR

• DOE goal: have an outcome for rezoning by the end of the 2019–2020 school year.
• The DOE reps said they’re gathering all the information they can get to be able to put together a plan in the next 2–3 weeks.
• They reminded the CEC that “the expert is the community member” in this process. Their timeline isn’t defined yet, “We don’t want to rush it, ” the DOE reps said.
• The point of PAR is that it needs to be out into the community. It needs to be on people’s schedules. You can ask people to come out to a meeting in their community, but it’s still another meeting. The DOE asks How do we get that buy-in in ways other than asking people to come to meetings? This is a question they’re hoping to answer with this process.

4. Concerns about PAR

Some questions and concerns were brought up from the CEC members:

• Concern: The entire PAR process could potentially take more time than they have, “We’re not working with much more time than we were last year,” Scott Powell reminded the DOE reps. He also pointed out that the process could take up to six months to only lead to another decision to delay again. Some members found this concerning, considering the DOE does not yet have a definitive timeline
• Concern: Since part of the process involved equipping the community with tools to engage in future plans, this might take a long time in reality. It’s not something that can be solved in a three hour training.
• Question: Is the DOE getting rid of existing proposals and creating all new proposals? Is the community responsible for drafting these proposals. DOE answer: still in the process of figuring that out.
• Question: Will a vote on proposals happen in the spring or the fall. Camille mentioned that she’s a very strong advocate for an April vote, because this gives parents opportunities to learn about the schools before the start of the next school year.
• Question: What’s the money involved? What’s the reality of how much time this will take? (no definitive answer yet)
• Question: “Do you feel strongly that we’ll find people for this team?” Camille asked. People who are on this PAR team need to be 110% committed to this process. May take up a lot of people’s time.
• Concern: Getting people involved early on. Last time, people showed up to the meeting as the decision time got closer and closer. “The paradox is that we need those people to be involved now,” Scott mentioned.
• Question: How do we get people to come out and discuss rezoning at the beginning of the process?
• Suggestion: There needs to be more education around equity and rezoning, said Francisca Montana. She said that all families regardless of socio-economic status can benefit from receiving more education around racial bias, white privilege, and school segregation. Her point is that people should know more about rezoning and how it will support equity initiatives in D15. There might be a workshop series that can do this.

5. Public Comment

This section was short but sweet. Audience members brought up some good points. Remember, people only have two minutes to speak.

• Question: (From a parent who is new to D15) is there any formal communication feed from the CEC to the SLTs to the parent coordinators? What information gets shared and how?
• Answer: For main information, there is one mailing list from CEC to spread out information. Sign up by emailing CEC15@schools.nyc.gov. There are some newsletters which vary from school to school.
• Comment: One woman pointed out that we have a lot of work to do on centering this process around equity. She said that community stakeholders who are concerned about their neighborhoods being left out do show up to meetings such as this one, and that we should recognize that.
• Request: One man requested some sort of flowchart to help understand the rezoning process, who CEC answers to, and how power is distributed.

Other useful links:

• Official CEC agenda for this meeting
• CEC website (to find out about more meetings)
• RedConnect website

To submit any questions or comment about this list of takeaways, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at lauren.costantino@journalism.cuny.edu