Manhattan Parent Re-Elected to NYC Panel that Shapes Educational Policy

Naveed Hasan, a parent to two children, was re-elected for a fifth term to represent Manhattan Community Education Councils on the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP), a 24-member body which oversees funding, commissions, and general policy decisions for NYC public schools.

Hasan first interacted with the Public School system after his family immigrated from Pakistan to New York in 1981. From there Hasan attended Brooklyn’s P.S. 99 Isaac Asimov, Mark Twain Junior High School and Edward R. Murrow High School.

In his work for PEP and NY Public Schools, Hasan --- whose first language was Urdu and who learnt English while being a student in NYC --- promotes multilingual fluency and multicultural inclusion for students across the city.

Hasan, who now lives with his family in the UWS, won his election June 8 with 100% of the vote to represent Manhattan’s six public school districts (D1-D6) in the annual PEP election, marking his fifth term on the panel. Prior to joining PEP, Hasan specialized in Computer Science at Columbia University, served as chair of PS 145 The Bloomingdale School’s parent advisory council for three terms, and was also elected to the Manhattan’s Community Education Council for District 3 (UWS Public Schools) as treasurer and chair of its Multilingual Committee.

Hasan said his involvement in PEP followed his passion to advocate for services he wished to see at PS 145, his children’s school, and then later at the district borough-wide level. One of the largest parts of Hasan’s role is the authority to write and approve contracts over $2,500 under NYC’s Department of Education, managing billions of dollars a month in contracts. Hasan said this allows the panel to shift the priorities of the school system, disapproving contracts that they don’t think best serve the schools and kids.

While in his position as Government Affairs Committee Chair, Hasan has founded and directed D3 Open Arms, a committee and coalition which aims to help families locate housing options, especially immigrant families. Additionally, his work in promoting multilingualism in NYC public schools has branched into immigration advocacy, wanting to help families who have been targeted by the Trump Administration’s anti-immigration policies. Hasan said one of his other main priorities is safeguarding students’ data against artificial intelligence (AI) programs and implementing guardrails.

Q: How did you get involved with PEP and why is it important to you?

N: There’s so many things when you’re a parent in public schools that are needed, in terms of energy from parents to give time, to make sure that the system is paying attention to them. We need everyone, honestly. There’s no way that I could do all of the things that need to get done.

Q: What are the main things you’re focusing on as you enter this next term?

N: The multilingual community work, that was what got me into parent leadership. We were trying to help create more dual language programs in District Three. Thanks to some of the people that came before me as parent leaders and myself, we helped start an Italian program in Harlem at PS 242, Russian dual-language program at my kid’s school, and at the same time, there were already long-standing Spanish dual-language programs. This all came in super handy when, in 2022, two things happened: we got refugees because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a lot of those families spoke Russian, so that program became full of newly arrived kids, but three or four months later, in the summer of 2022, the busses from Texas started arriving, and most of those kids are Spanish-speaking at home, and so they essentially saved the school system from enrollment decline across the city. That was an interest of many parents, including myself, to make sure that the kids in public school have available to them amazing programming that will attract families to go to public schools.

Q: What does your work comprise of, in your role as Government Affairs Committee Chair?

N: There’s a lot of issues around fears of going to school, coming from school, families not being able to show up for their kids for dismissal because they might have been picked up by ICE during court hearing or going to work. That really became sort of government relations work, and it’s been very beneficial to see elected officials really leaning into helping families, especially around the West Side.

Q: How is money being distributed? I know at one point class sizes were a point of contention.

N: Our school budgets are tied to two things: the number of students enrolled in your school and the types of needs they might have, whether it’s around poverty or not speaking English at home, or not living in permanent housing, temporary housing, any kind of disability. If you don’t have enough enrollment, you’re going to have a hard time doing anything else other than pay for classroom teachers, if that, and we want all of our schools to have everything, including music, art, dance, the things that enrich a kid’s life, and also brings a desire for the kids to come to school, attendance, and those things are more than just test scores in math and English. You want to have a full rounded education for the kids

Q: Are there any specific Manhattan issues that you represent on the panel?

N: We see trends around, especially elementary schools, which are geographically zoned. You have a legal right to go to the school that is close to your to your house, to your apartment, and if you happen to live in a neighborhood that is wealthier, you will tend to have a student and parent population that has better means. So families are better able to support both the school and their children, and it creates what people think of as a good school. How does the system make it so it’s fair? We need to be able to have that type of programming and the ability to attract families in neighborhoods that are not concentrated in wealth, that’s the issue in Manhattan, really.

Q: Recently, NYC’s Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) has come under fire for the removal of afterschool provider Manhattan Youth at some schools. Do you have a response?

N: I have received hundreds of messages from parents and children losing their beloved after school providers. In collaboration with other parent leaders, including D2 and D3, we have made it clear to DYCD that student satisfaction with Manhattan Youth needs to be a factor in retaining them at their school, as currently it is not. I hope DYCD allows Manhattan Youth to remain at all the schools that want them there next year. It’s not sensible policy from a school’s perspective to induce change for any reason that is not directly in the kids’ interest.

Q: Across NYC’s over 1,600 public schools, ranging from pre-K to 12th grade, AI is currently being integrated to varying degrees. How is AI impacting NY public schools?

N: The entire generative AI industry is built around a lack of privacy, everything is essentially publicly owned for these private companies. They’ve taken all this data, so what happens to student data? We want to make sure that we come up with solutions just to prevent this, and my proposal as a computer scientist has been that we need public infrastructure where we have a public system that runs AI for the benefit of New York City residents and not for the benefit of a private company.

Q: Why do you keep coming back to serve on the panel? What does it mean to you?

N: I’ve met some amazing people, that’s the thing that keeps bringing me back. I have dozens of parent partners and elected leaders, staff partners and houses of worship partners and community-based organization partners, who are all driven by a mission to help kids, and as a parent of two young ones, there’s nothing more.