Schools Chancellor David C. Banks attended a virtual town hall meeting with members of the Community Education Council of District 2 (CECD2).
The March 8 meeting, hosted by the CECD2 President Benjamin Morden, allowed members of the council to pose questions to Banks in his third month in office, and speak directly to the issues they believed demanded the most immediate attention within their district particularly focusing on improving enrollment, issues within gifted and talented programs, student safety and the chancellor’s four-pillar plan to improve NYC schools.
“I want to lift up the great work of our schools and our great teachers and I’m really excited about doing that and I think that also [it is important to] not only lift up parents and allow them to develop a greater level of trust in our system, but also to lift it up so that other schools can learn from their colleagues,” said Banks about his four-pillar plan. “It can be instructive for those schools, and I think that the best way for all of our schools to improve is for them to learn from each other.”
In that vein, the chancellor spoke with members of CECD2 to see what areas needed improvement and what he needed to be alerted to in order to adhere to his four pillar plan to fix areas of the NYC school system that demanded the most urgent attention.
“We have seen enrollment drop by nearly 2,000 students last year, and again another 2,000 students this year,” said Morden. “More alarmingly we have seen enrollment losses shift from the lower grades to the middle grades. In fact in this academic year with both absolute and percentage terms, the student enrollment losses in middle grades doubled. The shifting patterns in enrollment losses [are] no longer pandemic driven, but in my opinion policy driven. It is time to change course.”
One issue brought up was the amount of students able to enroll in various gifted and talented programs. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio announced in October of 2021 that his administration would eliminate the gifted and talented program to promote class and racial equity, but the Adams administration said they would do the opposite.
“Eighteen percent of District 2’s rising ninth graders last year did not get an offer to any of their top 12 choices in high school,” said CECD2 member Kaushik Das. “Current policy many parents mistakenly think that type tier one students [are those] with an 85 GPA or above. When in reality this extends to much lower kids in 80 grade point average and could have individual course grades as low as 70 in individual subjects. We also talked about that the size of tier one students is actually about 78% and could be a range from anywhere from 65 to 82%. I’m on record for calling it a lottery masquerading as a screen. I think at the root of this, it’s not keeping with your pillar of keeping that of what works.”
Banks acknowledged that he and his administration were still in the process of finalizing their decisions regarding the gifted and talented program and would be working closely with parents and educators to ensure that every student receives a fair and equitable education that challenges them to grow and learn.
“If you had a 95 average and that still kept us at 50% [of students enrolling into the gifted and talented programs], if I follow your rationale then it would say that it should only be open to kids with a 98 or 99 average,” said Banks in response to Das’s question. “I think we are talking about kids who have been working hard in spite of lots of issues and situations that they’ve had to deal with. I’m not talking about kids who don’t go to school and say [to them] ‘hey you’re all in the lottery’. That’s not what we are doing or even talking about. But nonetheless, I get it and that’s why I’ve been listening.”
Another issue raised was the alarming number of students leaving or not enrolling in schools. Formerly thought to be an issue caused by the pandemic, with the trend continuing, it may signal another root cause is to blame.
“We have seen enrollment drop by nearly 2,000 students last year, and again another 2,000 students this year,” said Morden. “More alarmingly we have seen enrollment losses shift from the lower grades to the middle grades. In fact in this academic year with both absolute and percentage terms, the student enrollment losses in middle grades doubled. The shifting patterns in enrollment losses [are] no longer pandemic driven, but in my opinion policy driven. It is time to change course.”
This sentiment was echoed by other members of the CECD2, who called to attention the need for a more effective way to keep students in school, especially when it comes to students who are missing school because of their own safety concerns.
“Safety is a top priority to all families with children,” said Robin Kelleher of CECD2 in a question to the chancellor regarding school safety. “We have seen a dramatic increase in safety issues across this city. District 2 has recently experienced multiple high-profile events, safety agents have been cut in half, principals have been either unwilling or unable to keep parents informed and parents have been frustrated and scared to send their kids to school. We’ve had bullets in the playground and people trying to enter who were armed or shouldn’t have been there.”
Chancellor Banks responded stating that keeping children safe was the absolute most important thing to do for the community as well as his administration. His background with the police department bolstered his motivation to ensure universal safety for NYC school children.
“I don’t want us to think that safety is simply about getting more police or getting more school safety officers, but we do need more,” Banks said. “We are down significantly the number of school safety agents that we need in our schools. I’m happy that we are going to be graduating a class [of safety officers] in the next couple of weeks and deploying that group, but I’ve been meeting with the mayor and we’ve been talking about how to escalate the process of getting more school safety officers back into our school.”
