Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We're happy to have Queens Public Library president and former New York City Schools chancellor and former deputy mayor, Dennis Walcott, back with us. He is here officially in his additional role as chair of the New York City Council Redistricting Commission. You know about the big mess that New York State has now in redrawn congressional district lines after the 2020 census? Well, the process for city council is underway too, and this is a big week for it. We'll explain why.

We will also ask Dennis as a past school's chancellor what he thinks about the smaller class size bill that we debated here on Friday, that the state legislature just passed. It is unknown whether Governor Hochul will sign or veto it. Mayor Adams is against it, at least as it stands, because he says it would force cuts to too many other important educational priorities, but we'll talk redistricting first. Dennis, always great to have you on the show. Welcome back to WNYC.

Dennis Walcott: Hey, Brian, good morning to you. That last segment was fascinating, I must say.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have the answer now, how to attain inflation without tamping down wages?

Dennis Walcott: No. What you did, though, is reminded me of my life back in 1979 when my wife and I bought our house and we got our mortgage at 9.75% interest rate. That was good at that time, because shortly after we closed, as you indicated in the segment, it started to go sky high and reached double digits. We were able to get back then what we thought was a reasonable mortgage, but that was 1979. You just had me flashing back with all the challenges, and especially in today's society, of what our young folks have to really deal with. There was a woman who called in and talked about where the rent going just so high. Yes, it was a fascinating piece.

Brian Lehrer: Well, thanks. What a lesson in history for people who were born after the time when somebody might have to pay 9% on their mortgage. All right, this congressional redistricting business is such an unholy mess as they look for districts that are not overly partisan one way or another and keep communities of interest together under the Voting Rights Act. What's the goal for city council redistricting?

Dennis Walcott: Our process is going to be a lot different, and just for the audience and for people who may not just be aware, obviously, this takes place every 10 years. What is different is that there's a commission that's appointed with seven members being appointed by the mayor. Five members that come from the majority of the city council and three members who come from those who are in the minority at the city council, that constitutes the 15 members. It's a great, committed group of individuals who are the commission members.

Over the last several months, we've been staffing up with the process of undertaking over the next year or so the drawing of new maps. We are an independent commission. We are volunteers. All of us are volunteers, and then we have staff who were responsible for that. So far we've held several meetings, both business meeting

as well as a public engagement meeting that was held on the 26th of May, where we had roughly 200 people, both either in-person, virtual, or through submissions who submitted testimony around their respective districts.

It's a different process. I think the challenge for us, as we have talked about, is the growth in the city population that's grown from 8.2 million people back in 2010 to now roughly 8.8 million in 2020. That's a 630,000 growth spurt, and we have a responsibility to make sure that we develop an average of, give or take, roughly 173,000 residents per district.

Just getting into the weeds, and my math teachers would be amazed that I'm about the talk about standard deviations, they would be saying, "Who the heck is this guy talking on the phone right now?" But in the past, there was a 10% standard deviation, where we could go 10% above that particular average, say, of 173,000, but back in October, the governor signed a state law which applies to us, where it only can be a 5% above or below standard deviation. We have to work within those frameworks as well. From a congressional point of view, it's totally different.

Brian Lehrer: Right. In other words, the districts have roughly the same number of people, so it's equal representation.

Dennis Walcott: Exactly, but then we also have to be very conscious of the demographic changes of the district as well, and so we have to fold that into the process, and also, even though it's no longer technically applicable, but we definitely will apply the issues of the Voting Rights Act and what it means for the city, we have to make sure that's a part of the discussion.

All those factors are key for us as we move along and analyze New York's City council districts, of which they're 51, and then take it from there and then have a preliminary submission to the council. They all have a timeline to either accept or reject and then we'll go back. Those are just the broad strokes of what we'll be undertaking and why I think it will be different than what we've been reading about in the paper from before.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and from the congressional districts. Well, you mentioned the demographics change changes, which, of course, are always so different and so thrilling in many ways in New York City as the population evolves, and you as the head of the Queens Library's system certainly know the diversity in Queens. One issue in our incredibly diverse city is how to draw city council lines to give electoral power to groups that have not had the power to elect any representative in the past. For example, I think next week we'll be having Queens' City Council Member Linda Lee on the show.

Elected last year, she's the first Korean American ever to be elected to council, it's my understanding, and that's shocking to me considering the Korean American community has been well-established in New York for a good long time now. It took that long to get that representation enough to have the power of electing somebody in a district. I know there are particular South Asian American communities and others looking to be grouped together enough to elect their firsts or others who

represent their interests. How do you take those kinds of aspirations into account?

Dennis Walcott: Yesterday, wearing my Queens Public Library hat, we had a huge contingent marching and the Queens Pride Parade. What you're talking about is what we saw out at the Pride Parade, in that we saw the representation from the various city council members that you're talking about or will be interviewing in the future, and that changing demographic was in full effect at the Queens Pride Parade yesterday. Part of the process that we'll be undertaking, and we already started it, is hearing the testimony from individuals as far as where they are, where they live, and how they feel their neighborhoods should be treated.

For example, back on the 26th of May, I remember one case where someone testified about an area across from Queens Boulevard that's part of the council [unintelligible 00:07:52] district, and maybe that area shouldn't be a part of that particular district, it should be a part of [unintelligible 00:07:57] district. We even get into that level of detail, but the caller, the woman who called about the rent, and she said she was from Long Island City, Long Island City has seen a tremendous growth in the Asian American, Pacific Islander community, and that's reflected in their council member right now.

We have to factor that in, the growth of the Asian American, Pacific Islander community, the growth of Hispanic community, the decline of the white community. This is all based on census now, and also the percentage decline in the Black community in certain neighborhoods. We have to factor that in in neighborhoods and we also have to factor in making sure it's continuous, and so we have to be very conscious and careful around those things and very precise, but also, we have to be very open around that process as well.

What we did, and this is what you may have referred to earlier in the segment, is that tonight originally at LaGuardia Community College, we're having a business meeting, not a public engagement meeting. At this business meeting, we'll be saying that we're not going to be submitting the preliminary draft at this particular time. We have the flexibility to do that, because we really want to go out more into the communities, into the five boroughs and really hear back from the public as far as their views around their particular neighborhood and then factor that into our decision-making.

We'll be laying out proposed dates this evening because, as you know, we have to give notification and publish it and meet all types of requirements as far as proper notification. We'll be doing that and then opening up the process even more so, not just having the one public engagement meeting and then after preliminary draft having others. That's what we'll be taking place tonight. Brian, going through your question, that type of feedback we value because there are communities out there that are very organized who are really submitting their data and their information, and that's what our staff will be analyzing and then presenting to the commission levels.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, who has a question about city council district or anything else relevant for Dennis Walcott, who in his day job is the president of the Queens'

library system, no complaints about you're overdue book fines. [crosstalk] I think they don't have them anymore. That was the last time you were on the show. You were talking about-

Dennis Walcott: I know. I can tell you exactly where I was when I did that interview too, but yes, no fine free. We have a lot of libraries under construction right now. By the end of this year, we'll be opening up a brand new Far Rockaway library. Several weeks ago, we opened up our Far Rockaway Teen library. Bay Terrace is under construction. We got a lot of moving parts with the libraries, doing great things.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks. 212-433-WNYC is that phone number, 212-433-9692 or tweet @brianlehrer. We'll get to talk to Dennis a little bit about his opinions on some things going on with the public schools. As I said at the beginning of the segment, if you weren't listening, this class size reduction bill that passed the state legislature last week but is controversial, even though everybody loves the idea in theory of smaller class sizes.

Dennis, before we get off redistricting, as you mentioned, there are 51 seats in New York City Council, that's why our series that we're doing this year is called 51 council members in 52 weeks, where we're touching every neighborhood of New York City through their current elected representatives this year. In our very blue city, I think 46 of the 51 are held by Democrats. There were just a couple of swing districts in the last election. How do you consider even the potential for partisan gerrymandering in basically a one-party city? That's why the congressional maps got thrown out for New York by the courts, too much partisan gerrymandering, they said. Is that even a potential issue at the city level?

Dennis Walcott: I don't see that as a potential issue at all. Let me tell you why, because, as I indicated in the beginning of this show, that the way we're constituted, again, the mayor appoints seven, the majority of appoints five of the city council, the minority appoints three, but once they're on-- I don't know who's who as far as Dems, Republicans, independents, we have been working as a full team of commissioners with a purpose of really drawing fair and balanced maps and not allowing partisan gerrymandering coming in.

I know there are a number of good government groups who talked about the openness of the process and making sure that we're open. Again, that's why we decided to delay any type of preliminary draft so we can go more into the communities and really here directly and have that factor in our decision-making. I just don't see that happening and that's just not our style.

I think the staff has been selected from a variety of different quarters, and who knows what their backgrounds are, and they're all professionals. We have a great staff there and great commissioners. Brian, I don't see that filtering in at all. Again, we have a very specific mandate and we have very specific guidelines, both by the constitution and also the city charter, that we have to follow and those timelines have to be adhered to.

Then one other thing connected to the timelines, for people who may have heard

that we had to submit the preliminary draft by the 7th of June, tomorrow, there is flexibility built into the charter to allow us to do some types of adjusting of the calendar, and that's why we thought it was important to adjust to get that factor in. Just going back to a different point, when we talked about the growth of the community, say, the Hispanic community grew around roughly 154,000 people and the Asian American, Pacific Islander community grew by 345,000. You see a lot of that growth taking place in various communities and that has to be factored in our decision-making as well.

Brian Lehrer: Jim, in the South Bronx, you're on WNYC with Dennis Walcott. Hi Jim.

Dennis Walcott: Good morning.

Jim: Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I have a question about the issue of diversity raised at the beginning of this segment. I'm African American in the South Bronx, and it occurs to me that the diversity that doesn't get talked about is political and policy diversity rather than ethnic diversity.

For instance, if you look at the last mayoral primary, the real deficits were on policy and ideology, not ethnicity. I'd like to know why you Brian and your guest seem to think that diversity should break along lines of ethnicity rather than something else. My last comment is, it sounds more like Lebanon, where diversity's defined in terms of distinct religious communities, and we see how great that worked out. Any comment, I'd like to hear it?

Ouch, charming. That's right.

Dennis Walcott: Sure. I'd love to comment. Go ahead, Brian. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead, Dennis. No, you go.

Dennis Walcott: No. All I was going to say is that we have a very specific prescription by charter of what we have to do and what we have to factor in, and by census as well. That's fairly defined for us that we have to follow. Based on what's defined as the step-by-step we have to follow, that gets into a lot of what I talked about earlier in the segment. How it falls out from a political point of view or policy point of view is based on whatever dynamics take place within that local community, but we have to be very conscious of what's prescribed to us as far as the step by step. Then that avoids, I think what Brian talked about earlier, both with the federal level and the state level and all the questions that people have.

Brian Lehrer: Right. I think another response to Jim is that the Voting Rights Law, because there was so much discrimination in our country's history, against Black people in particular, but also other ethnic minorities, from having them have any electoral power by being grouped in districts where they could have electoral power, that that's actually protected by law because of past discrimination, which the reality is, happened basically on the basis of race in this country.

Dennis Walcott: Exactly. We're also precluded from drawing weird districts to fit

specific designs of outcome. We're very conscious of some districts that were drawn in other areas that are very weirdly shaped, and that's still in certain areas for either one side or the other depending on how you're looking at, who is represented in those districts that we are not allowed to do.

We have certain guidelines we have to follow as far as districts that may cross over boroughs and not having more than one really that crosses over [unintelligible 00:16:43] into particular or the same borough. We have very specific things that we have to follow to make sure that we adhere with what the charter, the constitution, and the census status shows.

Brian Lehrer: This is WNYC FM HD and AM New York. WNJT-FM 88.1, Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are a New York and New Jersey public radio, and live streaming at wnyc.org. A few more minutes with Dennis Walcott, who is president of the Queens library system, chair of the New York City Council Redistricting Commission, which is what we've been talking about so far.

In our last few minutes, while you're here, Dennis, let me take advantage of your additional experience as former schools chancellor under Mayor Bloomberg and ask your opinion about this groundbreaking bill passed in Albany last week that we don't know if Governor Hochul will sign requiring class sizes to shrink from 25 to 20 in elementary school and from 34 down to 25 at the high school level.

Everyone loves the idea of smaller classes for more individual instruction, but the current chancellor David Banks released this statement. I'm going to read this for everybody's context. Chancellor Banks wrote, "The proposed multi-billion-dollar unfunded mandate in this bill forces school leaders to prioritize class size above critical school safety programs, dyslexia screenings, social workers, school nurses, summer programming, supports for special student populations, and even the expansion of community schools. Make no mistake, it will lead to large cuts in these critical programs that should not be a choice that school leaders have to make." What do you think you'd be saying if you were a chancellor today?

Dennis Walcott: It's interesting because I read The Times article and I understand exactly what the mayor and the chancellor are saying. It's a unfunded mandate. I understood also what I saw Senator Lou saying that there's federal funds there and potential state funds there, but that's only for the short term, and one cannot plan a law based on short-term funding. I definitely understand what the mayor and the chancellor are saying because they're going to have to make some very difficult decisions as far as how you meet the particular mandate that may be signed by the governor.

I also understand what we as parents and grandparents want for our children, to be in lower class sizes and having more concentrated teaching based on the number of students who are in the classroom. Believe it or not, I understand where Michael Mulgrew from the UFT is coming from because it means also more teachers coming into the system and more teachers that'll be part of the union.

The reality is that you have to have the appropriate funding, not just based on a one-year or a two-year timeline, but based on years stretching throughout the longevity of this particular law. You said it a couple of times, whether the governor will sign it. As I understand it, and I haven't been into the weeds of this, but if the governor does not sign it, that means that then it reverts back to the old board of education, since it's all part or linked together as far as the new 23-member panel that will be in place, the lower class size that'll be in place, and also the two-year extension of school governance as it exists right now.

I don't think one can separate out the different components of what was passed by the assembly and the state Senate. I think the governor really is in a very interesting dilemma or conundrum if she doesn't sign it because then, based on just my elementary interpretation of what I read about the law, it's all baked into one law. Then it reverts back, coming June 30.

Brian Lehrer: That's interesting. When you say it reverts back, then it wouldn't even be mayoral control of the public schools. For most of our listeners, this is ancient history, but you were in the Bloomberg administration, and before the Bloomberg administration, there were these 32-- We talked about the 51 city council districts. There were 32 different local elected school boards around New York City. A lot of people considered that dysfunctional for a variety of reasons. Mayor Bloomberg won from the state legislature mayoral control, which is really also mayoral accountability for what happens in the public schools. We could revert.

I did have a caller last week who said she would just as soon go back to local control. Why should one man, the mayor of the city of New York have the right to make so much policy through his chancellor of what happens in the schools all over the city? Maybe we're better off with locally elected school districts in every neighborhood. Would you argue no?

Dennis Walcott: Please. Let me. I lived through each level. I was a former board of ed member, one of those seven members back in the day. Then also, this is when I was president of the New York [unintelligible 00:22:01], I was a trustee that took over a very failing school board as well, and was the head of the three-member trustee group that took over this particular failing school board. It's a system back then that didn't work. Then one unknown fact, and I was testing someone who really should have known this, but they didn't know, I asked, "Who the last board of ed president that existed?" They thought it was a couple of people, but they didn't guess the right person.

Believe it or not, I was because under the Mayor Bloomberg, that lapsed for a month, if you remember, Brian, in that there was a discussion back and forth between the mayor and the state legislature, and had to have the issue resolved after the 30th of June. The old board of ed, which only met one time, reverted or came into existence in July for the month and then all the issues were settled and then school governance went to what it was before as far- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: That was a fractured system because the borough presidents got to

appoint some of those members as well as the mayor, and so there was no one person or one body really responsible.

Dennis Walcott: Plus the chancellor wasn't even responsible for the overall body because, again, going back to the old system of the board of education, that each superintendent was hired by their local board. If people talk about the issue of equity and fair funding and what it means, that was a system that was totally dysfunctional that existed before, that did not deal with equity at all. I think what the chancellor, David Banks is doing right now is really trying to balance in a, I think, very cohesive way the input of parents and the community in whose selected, but also being the final decision maker when it comes to the superintendent.

The mayor and the city put in a majority of the money. The mayor should be held to the fire as far as the accountability of the system. That mayor, whomever that mayor is, should be held in a year, two years, and definitely when the election comes up on how well the system did. I'm a firm believer in the system that exists right now, but the way the state legislature has passed it is that this mayor and this chancellor will have, based on the signature of the law by the governor, only two years. Again, it's two years with a change system that existed that is different than before, in that before, don't hold me to the [unintelligible 00:24:45], it went from 15 panel members to 23 or whatever it is and that increased- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Whatever. More parent input in the system.

Dennis Walcott: Parent members will be a part of it. That is correct. All that to say is, I don't know if you can separate out what the governor doesn't sign, then that means it reverts back.

Brian Lehrer: If we don't get smaller class size mandates, then we don't continue with mayoral control. Well, did you consider, in those days with you and Mayor Bloomberg, the centrality of small class sizes to educational success? The literature seems to show it matters most for low-income elementary school kids, which, of course, the city has so many children in that category. Was this discussed? I know mayor Bloomberg and you made it a point to reduce the size of the schools, breaking up big high schools in particular. Did you discuss class size too?

Dennis Walcott: Sure. People probably would say they weren't satisfied with the results of our discussion, but we felt that class size was important. The reality was really dealing with those schools that had been failing students for years and years and years and putting new schools in place and putting new systems in place to address that and then the recruitment of teachers to do the job.

Yes, that was part of the discussion, but I think the reality is we [unintelligible 00:26:03] school and make sure that there were choices available for parents to say, "I want my child to go to this type of school, to that type of school," are the things that we firmly believed in. As a result of that, we grew from roughly 1200 and change number of schools to close to 1800 that exist now. Even, interestingly enough, the current chancellor David Banks who evolved from the Eagle Academy and single-sex schools also became one of those choices. As a result of that, whether it's chartered,

whether it's a different type of non-charter public school, that option was given to parents to choose from.

Then the other thing I think, Brian, that was extremely important is building the accountability into the principals as well, that the principals really, and I think this is where David Banks is going both with the elimination of the upper-tier structure that was created under the former chancellors [unintelligible 00:27:01] and having more decision-making at the superintendent and the principal level. That's what we believed in as well, is the principal empowerment in what goes on and having fair student funding addressing that. I think all those factors play into what becomes a successful school.

I know you got to run, but the final thing I think is what this whole thing address is the role of parents and parental engagement. That's why we created parent coordinators to address that, but also how you maximize parental involvement or parent involvement in the schools. All those were part of the factors. I think those are clearly part of what the mayor and the chancellor are saying, but funding is so important to achieve this particular goal. That to me is the discussion that I think the legislature as well as the mayor and the chancellor and the governor need to have as far as how you sustain funding to meet the targets that have been identified with the proposal of this law.

Brian Lehrer: Former New York City Schools chancellor and deputy mayor, and as we just learned, former New York City Board of Education president under the old system as well as the current president of the Queens library system, and chair of the New York City Council Redistricting Commission, Dennis Walcott, always great to have you on. Thanks, Dennis.

Dennis Walcott: Brian, it's always a pleasure to talk to you, sir. Thank you very much.

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