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NYC faces ‘difficult choices’ to meet new class size mandates, education officials warn
By
Giulia Heyward
Published Feb 29, 2024
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Deb Cohn-Orbach / UCG / Universal Images Group via Getty Images
By
Giulia Heyward
Published Feb 29, 2024
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New York City is scrambling to find enough money — and space — to comply with a new state law limiting class sizes over the next few years, local education officials said Thursday.
“We’ll face some difficult choices that will be required to maintain compliance as the law’s requirements scale up,” said Emma Vadehra, the Department of Education’s chief operating officer, at a City Council hearing on the topic.
Vadehra and other education officials presented a dizzying amount of potential strategies for reducing class sizes, as the law requires. But some councilmembers questioned whether Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has sufficient plans in place to meet the state’s mandates.
Councilmember Rita Joseph, who chairs the Council’s education committee and represents parts of Brooklyn, criticized what she cast as inaccuracies in city officials’ reports on their progress to date. She also said she was “a little bothered” that New York City Public Schools had not yet implemented some of the recommendations from a working group tasked with providing guidance on the new law.
Many parents and educators initially heralded the law’s passage two years ago. It requires smaller classrooms to be incrementally achieved by 2028, with ultimate caps of 20 students for kindergarten through 3rd grade, 23 students for grades 4 through 8, and 25 students for high school.
About 40% of the city’s classrooms already comply with those targets, according to education officials. But the city needs thousands more teachers and nearly $2 billion in additional funding to remain in compliance through 2028, the city’s Independent Budget Office estimates.
Districts 16 and 23 in Brooklyn and District 7 in the Bronx currently have the greatest number of classes at or below the newly mandated caps, Vadehra said. Districts 26 and 28 in Queens and District 31 in Staten Island have the fewest number of classes in compliance.
NYC Public Schools employs nearly 77,000 teachers, and the city is considering streamlining hiring to find more. That could include expanding alternate certification programs, lower-cost preparatory processes, early hiring windows and financial incentives for recruiting and retaining teachers in certain areas. Schools may also be required to hire teachers over other vacant school positions in the future, Vadehra said.
Downsizing classes will require more classrooms, which some schools will be able to achieve by using administrative offices. Vadehra said there are roughly 500 schools that will still need more space, ranging from just a few spare classrooms to as many as 78.
Education officials are also considering reducing enrollment or finding more space by relocating pre-K and kindergarten classes from school buildings to local community organizations, with extra seats added. Certain schools may get “multi-session models” and staggered schedules.
Vadehra said she and other education leaders were in Albany this month advocating for more funding to help meet the new mandates. She noted that the funding the city needs “is not yet in our budget, and we have not identified a new funding source.”
During the hearing, city officials also voiced support for a proposed bill, sponsored by Joseph, that would require the Department of Education to report actual class sizes and more data on students enrolled in special programs.
Still, the councilmember expressed concerns about how the Adams administration is managing class size reductions. “The people who are making the decisions have never taught in New York City Public Schools,” said Joseph, who previously worked as a school teacher for two decades.
The city is expected to deliver its next plan for downsizing classrooms to the state education department this summer.
Tagged
Politics
education
new york city
schools
City Council
eric adams
Giulia Heyward
Giulia Heyward is a breaking news reporter on the Day-Of desk. She previously worked at NPR, as a breaking news reporter, and the New York Times, as a reporting fellow on the national desk. Her work has also appeared in CNN, The Atlantic and Politico. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or more securely on signal at 917-715-1458.
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