CM Gutierrez on class size working group and screen time in schools

Councilmember Krishna, followed by Gutierrez.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Good to see you all, and Chancellor and the bilingual education team.

I want to thank you all for coming out with me to one of our programs at a school in Jackson Heights, and I appreciate the department's commitment to bilingual education.

I have a couple questions on a couple different topics, but the first one is I know we talked a lot about

about class size, the class size reduction plan and getting to there eventually.

I just had one question.

I know in December 2023, the class size working group had come out with some recommendations of what are ways to find and figure out smaller class size spaces through different ways.

Has the DOE taken a look at that?

Are you guys considering those recommendations?

How is that going?

Yeah, absolutely.

We took a look at that both in

practice and consideration.

Most recently, as we said, we are looking at non-capital as well as capital investment.

Those non-capitals consider what's the utilization of our current buildings and where that is, and those are recommendations that came from the working group that you're talking about.

So yes, we have definitely looked closely at it, work shoulder to shoulder with SCA as well as partners across DOE to consider some of the factors there.

Erin, I don't know if you want to add anything there.

Yes, thank you, Chancellor.

Thank you for the question.

We are considering that, as the Chancellor said, our capital plan and approach to finding more space takes into account some things, including,

for example, like looking at shared space in buildings and these non-capital approaches that were identified by the class-sized working group in 2023.

And I think we're continuing to reflect on that.

what they shared then.

And again, as we release the class size reduction plan, I think we'll see that there's evidence of our consideration in the plan.

Great, thank you.

And then shifting gears completely to another topic that's more and more of concern on my mind is the presence and reliance of screens in schools, especially for elementary school students.

I know, Chancellor, you and I have had a conversation about that, and we're both committed to working together to address that issue.

It's just a number, and I want to focus on elementary school kids in particular.

Obviously, there's discussions that have to be at middle school and high school, but between the Chromebooks,

programs like SAVAS or iReady tests and things like that, there's just a lot of, and it's a city issue, but it's also a national issue, of the amount of screen times, especially since the pandemic, that kids are spending in the classroom and at home on screens.

And I'm already negotiating with my kids over PlayStation time and TV time and everything.

And this is not one more thing I wanted to add to the negotiation list with them.

So, you know, there are a lot of contracts that DOE has with ed tech vendors, I guess I'd call them.

And I'm just curious how DOE is monitoring the funding that goes towards those contracts and the effectiveness of funding those contracts at those levels.

And how do you all keep an eye on those things?

Yeah, that is such a great question.

And as someone who has young kids as well, something I'm super.

concerned about in thinking about screen time and what that means for our school system.

We are having those discussions as we continue to hear feedback on our policies.

When we think about ed tech,

resources and tech tools that are being used in schools.

We recently did a survey of all our principals to kind of get a sense of what's happening.

We're looking at multiple opportunities to think through how we can begin to

or accelerate assessing the effectiveness of those tools, and as a part of our broader technology strategy in general.

And I think more to come on that, but that's something that we are looking really seriously at.

Glad to hear it and look forward to continued conversations on those issues too.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Great.