CM Schulman on New Visions portal and school air conditioning

Shulman.

Time to get to her seat.

Councilmember Shulman.

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chancellor.

It's very good to see you, and thank you for all the things you've done in my district and come out and all of that.

So I have two things.

One is I wanted to do a quick follow-up on the new visions tool from the speaker.

So the new visions tool has a lot of support from principals, particularly in my district.

Many claim it's been instrumental in monitoring and improving student performance, graduation rates, and attendance.

So at a time when Envy is working across agencies to support every child and family is known, you know, I just want you to keep that in mind while the Division of Instructional and Informational Technology hasn't really shown a record of success yet building tools in schools.

Absolutely.

For the record.

Thank you.

Okay, one.

The other question, which is sort of simple but not simple, what percentage of schools do not have air conditioning in communal spaces such as gymnasiums?

Nasiums, auditoriums, and cafeterias.

Are schools expected to secure reservoir funding for AC in these spaces if they do not have it?

And how is DOE working to ensure equitable access to air conditioning system-wide?

Every year, and particularly this year, I'm getting calls about this.

In addition to which, you saw that we've had a number of 90-degree days even before we got to, like, it's only the second week in June.

And it's supposed to, with climate change, it's going to get warmer and everything else.

So please.

Yes.

Totally.

If you've ever had to sit in a graduation in a school, in an auditorium, and we're upon graduation season.

And so we've been really working.

And yes, a lot of our schools have used ResoA to fund these air conditions in these common areas.

So I just want to turn it over to Kevin Moran to talk more about our plans there.

Yes, great seeing you and thanks for the question.

Certainly as it relates to air conditioning,

We benefit greatly from the AC for All initiative that covers all of our classrooms and all of our instructional spaces.

We've taken the HEAT law and put it on our InfoHub for all principals, and I want to thank all our principals and administrators that do this work on a daily basis to make sure our students are not in spaces that exceed 88 degrees.

It's 82 degrees, you need to take action according to state law, ed law, and 88, you need to not use that space.

So we're thankful for the support of the council for all instructional spaces.

And so that brings us to your question, as how we do public assembly spaces.

So I think we're right now hovering at 5,705 public assembly spaces.

Many of those spaces, you've all helped us through ResoA grants.

We funded them.

Schools have figured out a way to fund them.

Our Division of School Facilities had just done Aviation's Cafeteria, Sheepshead Bay's Gymnasium.

So we're working with our tax levy base.

It is not a capitally funded category right now, so maybe that's the next best thing.

But currently, to answer your question, the number of PA spaces with AC is at...

2,300, so about 60% of our public assemblies do not currently have AC.

Okay, we'll talk about that at some other point.

I'm going to stop my question, but what I will ask the chair is if we can send written questions that we don't get to ask to public schools so that they can answer it, okay?

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Chair, very much.

Okay, and next we have Deputy Speaker Williams, followed by Councilor.

Councilmember Joseph.

Thank you so much, Chair.