In February, to build on this success, the Mayor announced a raft of School Climate reforms including $1.2 million for restorative practices training; $2.4 million to support educational planning and re-engagement for court-involved students; $1.5 million to provide Therapeutic Crisis Intervention training to 1,500 staff members over the next 3 years in high-need schools; and $432,000 for a SAGA Innovations math tutoring program, for a grand total of $5.4 million dedicated to school climate initiatives.

A major part of the Mayor’s February announcement was the establishment of the Leadership Team on School Climate and Discipline. The mission of this task force is to recommend ways to further improve the climate for learning and enhance the well-being and safety of students and staff by using more effective methods of addressing disciplinary challenges than suspensions, arrests and summonses in the City’s public schools. The Leadership Team is a collaborative effort involving multiple stakeholders – including representation from the City Council, city agencies, community members, unions, researchers, teachers, principals, students, parents and service providers – that will convene for a total of 12 months. The Leadership Team is co-chaired by Ursulina Ramirez, Chief of Staff of the DOE, and me.

To fulfill its mission, the Leadership Team will produce recommendations on strategies and funding required to:

• Improve the use of data to assess the effectiveness of current policy and practice, and spread promising positive discipline innovations system-wide;
• Increase access to mental health and other community-based supports for high-need students;
• Reduce the frequency and duration of suspensions and minimize arrests and referrals to the justice system for school-based disciplinary offenses;
• Reduce race, gender and disability disparities in student discipline; and
• Update the Memorandum of Understanding between NYPD and DOE to align the use of school security personnel and security measures with supportive school climate goals.

  As I stated earlier, the Leadership Team was announced in February, but the idea of creating a multi-stakeholder task force to improve our school’s climate had been a long time effort of many advocates. In June of last year, my office and the DOE and NYPD convened a large group of advocates and students to discuss school climate reform recommendations. Advocates presented several recommendations, with their number one priority being the creation of the Leadership Team.

  We carefully designed the structure and mission of this initiative in partnership with the advocacy community and in consultation with union representatives, principals, teachers, students and, of course, DOE and NYPD. The Leadership Team itself is comprised of a 30-person governing body that is charged with providing direction to the execution of the initiative’s mission. In addition, five Working Groups, each led jointly by a government member and a non-governmental expert are currently working to produce policy recommendations that will later be reviewed by members of the Leadership Team. Technical assistance was generously supported by the Atlantic Philanthropies and we are hopeful that we’ll receive support shortly from the Open Society Foundations.

  Each Working Group is invested in developing recommendations to improve different aspects of student disciplinary policies.

  • The School Climate Working Group is co-chaired by my co-panelist today, Lois Herrera, CEO of the Office of Safety and Youth Development and Kim Sweet, Executive Director of Advocates for Children. This group will produce recommendations to improve system-wide implementation of positive discipline strategies with a particular focus on high-priority schools.
  • The Data and Research Working Group is co-chaired by Michele Sviridoff, Deputy Criminal Justice Coordinator at the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice and Edward Fergus, Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy at New York University. This group has created a methodology for selecting high-priority schools –or schools that could benefit from additional supports. Additionally the group is creating a descriptive analysis of school climate data and will offer recommendations to improve data collection, quality and use.
  •  The Resource Integration Working Group is co-chaired by Gladys Carrion, Commissioner of ACS, and Nancy Ginsburg, Director of Adolescent Intervention and Diversion Team at the Legal Aid Society. This group will produce recommendations for improving educator access to community and citywide resources and services.
  • The School Safety Working Group is co-chaired by Chief Brian Conroy, Commanding Officer of the School Safety Division of the NYPD and Kathleen DeCataldo, Executive Director of the NYS Permanent Judicial Commission on Justice for Children. This group is analyzing the effectiveness of current practices for improving school safety while continuing to reduce arrests and summonses. They will recommend training and other strategies to improve police-student relations and recommend updates to existing protocols for responding to non-emergency situations in schools, among other recommendations. The Legislative Counsel for City Council is a member of this working group as well as the Leadership Team.
  • Lastly, the Principals’ Working Group is co-chaired by Julie Zuckerman, principal of PS 513 Castle Bridge School in Washington Heights and Celeste Douglas-Wheeler, principal of MS 57 Ron Brown Academy in Bedford Stuyvesant. This is the only working group that has two governmental co-chairs. The Principals’ Working Group will review and vet policy recommendations emerging from the other Working Groups and will produce its own recommendations to improve school climate assessment tools among other recommendations.

    Each Working Group has met two times and will meet for a third time within the month. Meetings have been well attended and characterized by high degree of enthusiasm, candor and good will. Working Group co-chairs have expended considerable time preparing for and chairing meetings, with assistance from the Leadership Team’s staff. Additionally, many Working Groups have formed multiple subcommittees that have met frequently to draft policy recommendations. At the request of principals, the last Principals Working Group meeting was 8 hours long! This high level of investment and commitment speaks volumes to the timeliness of this initiative and the concrete need that the Leadership Team is addressing.

  The Leadership Team will review a set of preliminary policy recommendations this spring and will release an update to the Mayor, Council, Chancellor, Police Commissioner, relevant agencies and the public in the summer. The task force will then continue to review progress and finalize priority topics for discussion during the next phase of the initiative—which will begin in the fall. In approximately December, the Leadership Team will produce its final policy recommendations.

  As you can see we have made much progress, but there is still much to do. Principals and teachers in some schools feel like they do not have the resources necessary to implement positive behavioral strategies. Suspensions, arrests and summonses are often concentrated in a small number of schools. Moreover, racial, ethnic and special education disparities persist with regard to suspensions, arrests and summonses. The Leadership Team, working collaboratively with the DOE, NYPD and MOCJ, teachers, principals, students and community members, will continue to strive to improve the climate for learning and reduce the need for suspensions, arrests, and summonses in our schools. I am happy to answer any questions you may have.