Dr. Zoe Sperrazza testifies on pay equity for CBO educators

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Are you Zoe?

Yes, yes, I'm Zoe.

Thank you so much.

If you'll give me just one moment.

Sorry.

Zoe, please.

Can you hear me?

I can totally hear you.

Do you want to be off camera?

That's allowed.

Yes.

Well, I'm actually going to pull over right now.

Thank you.

Yeah, no, no, I don't.

You aren't complicit in my illegal.

There are even no responses.

So, good afternoon, Chair, and members of the Subcommittee on Early Childhood Education.

I'm Dr.

Zoe B.

Sparaza, and I am the Education Director at Kitty Academy of Williamsburg, a CBO serving children in

families in Brooklyn.

I'm also a lifelong educator.

I hold a doctorate in education and leadership.

And perhaps most importantly to the testimony I'm going to give today, I'm the mother of a two-year-old who's here in the back seat and expecting our second child currently.

The wife of an elementary school teacher.

Apparently my childcare hack was to get my master's in early childhood and my certification in birth through second grade, both DOHMH requirements, as we mentioned earlier, and then demanding free care as part of my compensation.

I'm here to ask the city,

to make a commitment that is long overdue and to advocate for my staff, pay equity and meaningful salary increases for all educators teaching New York City's youngest children, including 2K, 3K, and pre-K educators working in CBOs.

Our early childhood education is in crisis.

As an education director, I see the consequences firsthand.

We are expected to recruit and retain highly qualified, educated, experienced teachers to do extraordinarily important work, yet we are asking those teachers to accept compensation that does not reflect

their education, credentials, responsibilities, or value.

We are competing for educators in a city where qualified teachers have other opportunities, opportunities that often provide significantly better compensation, clearer salary progression, benefits, and greater long-term financial stability.

This is not simply a staffing problem.

It is a quality problem, an equity problem, and ultimately a problem for New York City's children.

A teacher should not become less valuable because she walks into a CBO classroom instead of a district school classroom.

A degree does not become less valuable.

A teaching certification does not become less valuable.

Years of experience do not become less valuable.

And most importantly, the children sitting in that classroom do not become less deserving of an exceptional teacher.

As an administrator and a mother, I refuse to accept the idea that the solution is simply to lower our expectations.

We should not be expected to diminish the quality of care and education we provide because we cannot afford to compete for highly qualified teachers.

We should not lower hiring standards.

We should not normalize constant turnover.

We should not ask programs to somehow do more with less while simultaneously holding them accountable for increasingly rigorous educational outcomes.

And we should certainly not accept a system where our youngest and most vulnerable children, who cannot advocate for themselves, experience the consequences of decisions made about how much the adults educating them are worth.

Our teachers deserve a real salary scale comparable to other New York City educators.

I'm a big believer in you get what you pay for.

New York City made an extraordinary commitment when it decided that early childhood education should be made available to its children, but access alone

Cannot be the finish line.

Universal education must also mean high quality education and quality requires an investment in the people doing the teaching.

And it cannot expect CBOs to solve a workforce crisis that they did not create and cannot financially solve alone.

We absolutely cannot accept less for our children.

The city owes that to its educators.

The city owes that to its families.

And most of all, the city owes that to its children.

Thank you very much for the opportunity.

Thanks a lot today.

Thank you, Zoe, and best of luck.

And if you've, when you're not mobile, email the testimony if you haven't already.

Will do.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

That was a beautiful testimony.

Okay, Lori is back.

Lori Congiolosi.

My apologies.

You can unmute yourself.