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NEWSCLIPS re the city's failure to accurately report class size figures and to comply with the state law on class size reduction

These articles discuss the fact that DOE has released inaccurate class size figures, and the request by Speaker Miller, Councilmember Jackson and Senator Schneiderman for an audit by the State Comptroller's office of the city's use of the state funds for class size reduction. See article at bottom, revealing that despite claims by DOE to have been cleared of misconduct, a previously unknown audit showed that in 2002, the city had only formed 55% of the additional classes in grades K-3 that it had claimed and received funding for from the state.

Class sizes may be bigger than reported

BY GLENN THRUSH

NEWSDAY STAFF WRITER

January 30, 2005, 8:18 PM EST

State Comptroller Alan Hevesi is auditing city data on kindergarten to third-grade class sizes amid accusations that the Bloomberg administration greatly exaggerated the number of new lower-grade sections added in recent years.

A Hevesi spokesman said his office had been planning the audit for months. Word of the probe came after City Council Speaker and Democratic mayoral hopeful Gifford Miller held a news conference Sunday calling on Hevesi to investigate the use of $123 million in class-size reduction funding.

Both politicians cited a July 2004 analysis by the city's Independent Budget Office indicating the Bloomberg administration may have overstated the number of new sections created since 2003 by more than 1,000.

The Independent Budget Office analysis also showed that the average class size in kindergarten increased slightly over the past year, from 20.7 to 20.9, despite an additional $88 million in state and $35 million in city funding for class-size reduction.

"God knows where this money is going," said Miller at a City Hall news conference. "We unfortunately lack confidence that the Department of Education is putting its money where it's supposed to be put."

Department of Education spokeswoman Michele Higgins accused the speaker of election year grandstanding.

"It's unfortunate that politics has taken precedence over the facts," she said. Miller is close to teachers union president Randi Weingarten, who is locked in a bitter dispute with Bloomberg over the teachers' contract.

A similar Hevesi audit in last year showed that the state money was properly used and the new probe will have the same results, Higgins added.

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Hevesi will eye size of classes

BY LISA L. COLANGELO

DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU

State Controller Alan Hevesi plans to investigate whether millions of dollars in city and state funds set aside to reduce class sizes are actually being used to create smaller classes, officials said yesterday.

Over the last two years, kindergarten classes in the city's public schools have increased slightly, despite the influx of cash designed to shrink them, according to the city's Independent Budget Office.

Classes in first, second and third grades have shrunk, the budget office found.

Council Speaker Gifford Miller (D-Manhattan) joined with education advocates yesterday to demand a class-size audit - a review that Hevesi staffers said had been planned long ago.

"It's not acceptable for the Department of Education not to be able to very clearly say how large the classes are and where the reductions were as a result of this money," said Miller, a likely candidate for mayor.

A similar review conducted a year ago showed "the funds are being used to reduce class size," according to Michele Higgins, spokeswoman for the state Education Department.

"We have augmented the state funds with city funds to make sure that class size keeps going down in our schools," Higgins said. "It's unfortunate that politics has taken precedence over the facts."

Originally published on January 31, 2005

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COMPTROLLER'S OFFICE TO AUDIT EDUCATION DEPARTMENT FIGURES

New York Sun, January 31, 2005

The state comptroller's office will audit the Department of Education's data on class size after a report by the Independent Budget Office contradicted information presented by the Department of Education, a spokesman said yesterday.

A report on average class sizes released by the city's Independent Budget Office in July showed an increase in the last two years for city kindergartens, questioning the validity of the Department of Education's numbers, which showed the number of children in kindergarten had fallen. This discrepancy prompted elected officials and advocates of smaller class sizes to ask the comptroller to audit the Department of Education's data. A spokesman for the comptroller's office, David Neustadt, said the audit will begin shortly and would take between five and six months to complete.

In the last fiscal year, the state and city allocated $135 million to reduce class sizes from kindergarten through third grade. The speaker of the City Council, Gifford Miller, Council Member Robert Jackson, and state Senator Eric Schneiderman, who raised the issue yesterday at a press conference, stopped short of saying the Department of Education had misappropriated the money, preferring an audit by the comptroller to clarify the results. Advocates said a difference in methodology may account for the different numbers. The IBO found the average class size for kindergarten through third grades increased in 15 school districts while falling in 14 in the last year. All 34 school districts have reduced their class size by an average of almost four students a class since 1998, according to the IBO analysis.

- Special to the Sun

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Audit: City created far fewer classes than promised

BY ELLEN YAN

NEWSDAY STAFF WRITER

January 31, 2005, 8:49 PM EST

More than a third of the new classes city education officials promised for kindergarten to third grade were never created despite more than $225 million in state aid, a state audit released Monday found.

New York City got 65 percent of such state aid in a deal to create 4,034 classes from 1999 to June 2002, according to the report from Comptroller Alan Hevesi's office. But only 2,613 classes were set up, the audit concluded.

Auditors found the city used some of the money for 170 new fourth-grade classes. Fourth grade is crucial because those students' standardized test scores help rate schools.

The report was completed in September 2003 but was not released until Monday, a day after city education officials insisted the audit found the money had been used properly and said there was no need to investigate the program.

"The Board of Education's claim that we found no problems in our 2002 class size audit is completely inaccurate," Hevesi said. "We did find problems, and that's why we are now going to do a more in-depth review."

Michele McManus Higgins, a spokeswoman for the city Education Department, said yesterday that city officials disagree with the audit and have funneled more than $37 million this year to lower class sizes.

She said officials were not trying to mischaracterize the report but were noting that it did not conclude the city had used the aid on other programs.

The 2003 audit did not focus on where the money went, but the new audit will take up the issue and examine whether class sizes actually went down, Hevesi's office said.

Leonie Haimson, head of Class Size Matters, believes the school system used class-size reduction funds instead of city dollars to pay teachers salaries. "This is misusing the money also," she said.

The perennial problem of large classes is once again a hot-button issue into the elections. Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed deferring $1.3 billion in school repairs and construction, blaming Albany for failing to funnel the money as part of a landmark court order.

In July, an analysis by the Independent Budget Office showed that the average class size in kindergarten increased slightly in the past school year, from 20.7 to 20.9, despite an additional $88 million in state aid and $35 million in city funding.

A memo last year from Kathleen Grimm, deputy chancellor for finance, explained that figures showing larger classes are misleading because some of them are based on October enrollments, which don't accurately reflect no-show students.