Chalkbeat

Mamdani pledges $43 million to fix NYC childcare payment delays before school starts

2026-08-31T18:47:31+00:00

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday pledged to address payment delays that are threatening the rollout of his signature free childcare program for 2-year-olds and pushing some providers to the brink of closure ahead of the Sept. 10 school opening.

Mamdani, who made the expansion of free childcare a major plank of his mayoral campaign, pledged to invest $43 million to rebuild depleted staffing at the Education Department’s Division of Early Childhood Education. He also vowed to reassign staffers from other parts of city government to help speed up the registration of new contracts and expedite interest-free loans to providers whose contracts haven’t been approved.

“We are bringing every resource to bear to get providers paid, get classrooms open and make sure families have the care they were promised,” Mamdani said in a statement.

At an unrelated press conference Monday, Mamdani said the Education Department has reached out to every childcare provider and tripled the number of staffers working on contracts. Providers who applied for a loan by Monday will have it processed by the end of the week, he added.

The inaugural year of free 2-K is set to enroll roughly 2,000 toddlers across five school districts. But some 2-K providers, as well as those contracting with the city to care for 3- and 4-year-olds, have been waiting weeks or months for money they need to pay staff, cover their electric bills, and purchase supplies.

“That puts a stress on providers, not knowing when you’re going to get paid,” said Doris Irrizary, a childcare provider in the Bronx and co-founder of the group ECE on The Move, which advocates on behalf of home-based providers. “Most of us live check to check.”

To provide subsidized childcare for about 150,000 kids under age 5, New York City’s Education Department relies on a sprawling system of private daycare operators like Irrizary who win contracts from the city to provide programs that are free to families.

Contract and payment delays have bedeviled that system for more than a decade. When former Mayor Bill de Blasio launched his Universal Prekindergarten program for 4-year-olds in 2014, roughly two-thirds of the new contracts were delayed by the start of school in September, the comptroller at the time said. In the years that followed, the early childhood department gradually built up the personnel and expertise to help mitigate those delays, former staffers recalled.

But when Mayor Eric Adams took office in 2022, the Division of Early Childhood Education faced a rocky transition. Some longtime staffers left, and the city reassigned hundreds of others as part of a reorganization, including 200 instructional coordinators who worked directly with providers.

Payment delays to providers again grew so acute that some organizations closed their doors for good. That prompted former Chancellor David Banks to deploy a “rapid response team” to speed up payments.

City officials say the staffing reductions from the Adams administration continue to hamstring the early childhood division. An Education Department spokesperson didn’t share the division’s current headcount and how it compares to past years. But Mamdani has pledged to hire 200 new staffers to expand the contracting and outreach teams and ensure there are more staffers providing direct support to programs.

Mamdani’s administration has already faced some operational complexity in recruiting providers — particularly the small, home-based providers who have largely been left out of past childcare expansions — and getting the word out about the program. The program is set to expand to 12,000 2-year-olds next year, and Mamdani has promised it will grow to cover any family who needs care by the end of his first term.

In July, Simone Hawkins, the deputy chancellor overseeing the Division of Early Childhood Education, announced her departure — a worrying sign for some advocates who said Hawkins was making long-needed changes. Mamdani and schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels have not yet named a replacement.

Some longtime providers are hopeful that the latest efforts can speed up payments, but wary after seeing similar reforms come and go over the past decade.

“To me, they keep on reinventing the wheel,” said Irrizary. The pressure to quickly open 2-K seats put further strain on a system already dealing with existing issues, such as low pay for providers, a long waitlist for state-funded childcare vouchers, and thousands of unfilled seats, she said.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

NYC budget gives every public school kindergartner $1,000 for college, restores education programs

2026-06-30T19:04:37+00:00

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New York City public school kindergartners will automatically receive $1,000 for college expenses, up from $100, under a budget deal announced Tuesday between Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the City Council.

The budget also restores a handful of education programs that Mamdani did not include in his preliminary proposal and were at risk of cuts, including a mental health initiative that operates clinics in schools and a program for students with disabilities who have sensory issues that interfere with their learning.

The $125.8 billion budget agreement marks the end of Mandani’s first budget cycle since taking office. Though he initially warned of a multi-billion shortfall, the mayor indicated that the deal with the City Council “balanced the budget without slashing the services that New Yorkers rely on.”

“Above all else, this budget offers a roadmap for the years to come,” Mamdani said shortly after shaking Council Speaker Julie Menin’s hand.

The mayor steered clear of some potentially controversial cuts. Earlier this month, city officials indicated that they will spend $290 million next year to keep school budgets steady even if their enrollment drops, a pandemic-era “hold harmless” policy that many school funding experts argue should be phased out. Former Mayor Eric Adams tried to wind that program down, but faced enormous backlash and reversed course.

Still, Mamdani scaled back other education initiatives. He initially planned to spend more than half a billion dollars to comply with a state mandate to shrink class sizes. After convincing the state legislature to extend the deadline to reach full compliance, Mamdani pared back class size spending considerably.

Here’s what you should know about the budget deal.

A tenfold boost for college savings accounts

All kindergartners in New York City public schools will automatically receive college savings accounts with $1,000, money that is invested in a tax-advantaged 529 account and is expected to grow before students tap it for higher education expenses. (Most charter schools have opted into the program, too.)

The NYC Kids Rise program, which launched about a decade ago, previously doled about $100 per student. Making the program more generous was a top priority for Menin who framed it as “one of the most effective ways we can truly address income inequality” and ultimately boost students’ future wages.

The money can be used for vocational schools, community college, or four-year programs. Menin said the $64 million initiative is the largest universal college savings program in the nation. Families, businesses, and other organizations can contribute as well.

City Council’s initial proposal called for depositing $3,000 into accounts for low-income families, but that did not make it into the final budget deal.

A slew of programs spared from the chopping block

Similar to prior mayors, Mamdani did not include funding for several existing education programs until he faced pressure to do so from advocates and City Council members. Those programs, restored in next year’s budget, include:

Mental Health Continuum ($5 million) Offers mental health support at 50 schools, largely in the South Bronx and Brooklyn as well as several school-based clinics.
Restorative justice ($6 million) Supports schools to adopt less punitive approaches to student misbehavior, such as peer mediation and circle discussions.
Sensory Exploration, Education & Discovery ($8.4 million) Provides extra help for students with disabilities who have sensory issues that interfere with their learning.
Outreach to immigrant families ($4 million) Helps fund efforts to communicate with families in their home languages, including translation services and in local ethnic media outlets.
Student Success Centers ($3.3 million) Trains youth leaders to help high school students navigate the college admissions process.

The Coalition for Equitable Education Funding, a constellation of more than 120 advocacy organizations, praised the funding restorations.

“These programs are currently benefiting thousands of students and families, and we thank the Mamdani Administration and the City Council for ensuring these critical programs will continue for another year,” the group wrote, which reported the dollar amounts that were restored. (A City Hall spokesperson did not immediately confirm them.)

Fate of popular school data contract remains unclear

Mamdani vowed to slash wasteful spending in outside Education Department contracts, but his budget proposal included cuts to just one: A portal that stitches together data from various city databases. Many educators say it is a useful tool that saves countless hours that would otherwise be spent combing through creaky databases by hand.

City officials did not immediately respond to questions about whether the $8.9 million contract with the nonprofit New Visions for Public Schools would be restored in the final budget deal. A slew of educators, advocates, and lawmakers have called in recent weeks for the city to reverse the decision to cut the contract.

Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Mamdani promised to cut wasteful education contracts. Critics say he picked the wrong one.

2026-06-26T21:06:01+00:00

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After promising to eliminate wasteful Education Department contracts, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration has so far publicly identified just one item in the agency’s $12 billion contract budget.

It’s an $8.9 million data portal developed by the nonprofit New Visions for Public Schools that merges reams of student data, including attendance and test scores, into a tidy dashboard.

The proposal is generating backlash from the City Council, even as local lawmakers have pushed to rein in contract spending. Many educators are also furious, and nearly every public school in the city uses the portal. Additionally, the data portal serves as a case management system for a program that pairs homeless students with “caring adults” — an initiative Mamdani wants to expand.

“There are very few things that the teachers and I say that we have to have,” said Sarah Scrogin, principal at East Bronx Academy for the Future. “It doesn’t make sense to take it away.”

City officials have not offered a detailed rationale for cutting the data portal, which allows staff to quickly identify trends in student test scores, flag students who are off track for graduation or frequently absent, and input qualitative notes so school teams can coordinate support.

Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels said at a City Council hearing this month that his agency proposed eliminating the New Visions data contract because similar information is available in other systems. But even Samuels acknowledged the tool is useful to schools and it would be “clunky” to pull data without it.

“I could see why it was viewed as potentially duplicative, but in terms of actually how the system works, I understand the value of the portal,” Samuels said.

An Education Department spokesperson said the city hopes to “extend core functions” of the tool next school year but did not say whether the contract would be extended. The city’s final budget is due July 1.

The proposal has raised questions from local lawmakers about how city officials are vetting contracts for elimination as Mamdani seeks to reduce spending. City Council member Rita Joseph raised concerns about how the cut could affect the program for homeless students, called Every Child and Family is Known.

“How does the city plan on expanding Every Child and Family is Known … while simultaneously cutting the platform it depends on to do the work?” Joseph asked during a recent hearing. A group of state lawmakers have urged the city not to cut funding for the portal.

Scrogin, the Bronx principal, said the tool has helped guide decisions about how to support vulnerable students, noting that her school participates in Every Child and Family is Known.

Three years ago, she began providing students in temporary housing with laundry cards and detergent after noticing that school staff were repeatedly citing lack of access to clean clothes as a barrier to school attendance.

“I don’t have time to read handwritten logs about why students couldn’t come to school,” Scrogin said. The New Visions portal, which digitally aggregated the notes, made the pattern clear.

She has also used the tool to identify students who need additional math tutoring based on their Regents scores and math credits.

For their part, New Visions officials have pushed back against the argument that the portal is duplicative because schools already have access to the same data elsewhere.

“The challenge that administrators, teachers, counselors face across the system is not that the data exists somewhere, but that the data exists in too many different places,” New Visions President Mark Dunetz told the City Council.

He argued the department’s existing tools function as one-way reporting systems rather than collaborative planning tools. Without the portal, educators would have to manually download spreadsheets and compare data across multiple systems instead of accessing it in a single dashboard.

Dunetz said no current Education Department tool connects data from the department, other city agencies such as the Department of Homeless Services, the City University of New York, and a range of community organizations.

He added the contract is a good deal for the city because New Visions raises roughly $5 million annually in philanthropic funding for the portal on top of the city’s investment.

“A private for-profit vendor would probably charge at minimum $25 million for this level of personalized software development,” he said.

Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s $1.9 billion dilemma: How long can schools be ‘held harmless’ for enrollment losses?

2026-06-22T22:45:12+00:00

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New York City is spending nearly $290 million next year to prevent budget cuts at schools that have lost or are projected to lose enrollment, according to new Education Department data.

It’s more than double what the city spent prior to the beginning of the 2025-26 school year on the policy known as “hold harmless.”

The sum reflects the increasing cost of continuing the policy that began during the COVID pandemic to provide financial stability to schools losing enrollment. Six years later, those enrollment losses show no signs of abating, and the cost of propping up budgets at shrinking schools has grown dramatically.

For this coming school year, 723 schools got some amount of hold harmless money. Fifty-five of those schools got over $1 million.

The total amount that the Education Department has spent on the policy since 2020 is nearly $1.9 billion.

Schools get their budgets in the spring for the coming academic year based on their projected enrollment. Then in the middle of the school year, money is either added or taken away from that initial allocation based on the number of students who actually showed up. But for most of the past six years, the city has been keeping initial budgets steady when schools’ projected student numbers drop and has not been clawing back money in the middle of the year for schools missing the mark with their student rosters.

Efforts to pare back the hold harmless policy have generated significant political opposition, as former Mayor Eric Adams found out when he proposed phasing out the support in 2022. But the longer officials keep the policy in place, the more expensive it becomes. It also further pulls the Education Department away from its original method of funding schools based primarily on enrollment numbers and student needs. That ongoing expense is particularly consequential as the city faces a yawning budget deficit.

“This is a snowball rolling down the hill, and it’s just getting bigger,” said Ana Champeny, the lead researcher for the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog. “Continuing this misguided policy is just not the right choice for the city, and it’s not the right choice for fiscal stability.”

Schools have come to rely on the money, and it has proved indispensable for many shrinking schools. Stopping the practice would also likely complicate the city’s efforts to comply with the state’s class size law, since it would force staff layoffs and increase class sizes at many schools

“That funding is incredibly important for us to reduce the adult-to-kid ratio,” said Kiri Soares, the principal of Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women in downtown Brooklyn. It also has helped close the learning gaps that emerged during the pandemic.

Her school is slated to receive about $374,000 as a result of being held harmless for next year. The school’s enrollment has shrunk to 350 this year from nearly 500 in 2020.

Who’s getting hold harmless money and how much?

The city’s student population dropped by about 22,000 from the 2024-25 school year to the 2025-26 school year. Final enrollment projections for next school year predict another drop of more than 20,000 students, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of the data. (The enrollment projections don’t include students in prekindergarten programs, or District 75 schools for students with complex disabilities.)

As a result, the cost of the hold harmless policy has been rising. The money ensures that schools’ initial budgets for the coming school year are at least as high as their initial budgets for the current school year. Even schools that aren’t projected to lose enrollment next year might be getting hold harmless money. That’s because they lost students previously, and the city is using roster figures from a few years back for the calculation. (Schools whose projected enrollment went up, leading to higher budgets, still get to keep those gains, which tallied about $250 million.)

For some schools, hold harmless money has become a significant portion of their overall budget. I.S. 339 in the Bronx, which has shrunk from 315 students in 2020 to 150 this year, is slated to get nearly $2.5 million in hold harmless money next year. That accounts for roughly a third of the school’s overall budget of $7.8 million.

That’s why principals say that if the city does phase out the hold harmless spending, they should do it gradually.

“You can’t just pull what’s been given to us for half a decade from out from under us because it will completely destabilize schools,” said Soares.

But other principals have mixed feelings about the policy, noting that it inflates the per-pupil budget at shrinking schools higher than schools whose rosters are growing.

“It’s really demoralizing to work and work and work to retain enrollment and effectively to have your students be penalized by having less average money per pupil,” said one Manhattan principal who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“It doesn’t make any sense that we’re still being funded as if we’re in a pandemic,” the principal continued. “Enrollment is declining, and this is the situation we’re going to be in for the next 10 years.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

Allegations against Kamar Samuels highlight widespread dysfunction in NYC’s school contract system

2026-06-18T20:51:26+00:00

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On the campaign trail, Mayor Zohran Mamdani pledged to reduce fraud and waste in Education Department contracts, which total nearly $13 billion in spending, about a tenth of the entire New York City budget.

Recent allegations that his chancellor, Kamar Samuels, violated key contracting rules are complicating those efforts and have put the mayor in a delicate position.

The allegations that Samuels skirted the competitive bidding process in his prior role have brought scrutiny from investigators, lawmakers, and the public, while also casting a brighter spotlight on a system that almost all observers say is deeply flawed, even if they disagree about how to fix it.

One member of the City Council, Queens Democrat Phil Wong, has called for Samuels to resign, arguing he is not the right leader to oversee contract reforms. So far, Mamdani has publicly stood by Samuels and has asked allies on the City Council to do the same, according to someone familiar with the outreach.

In interviews with more than a dozen educators, administrators, and elected officials deeply familiar with the Education Department’s procurement system, many of whom were granted anonymity to speak freely about the system, few expressed surprise that someone might go outside the rules. They described a broken contracting and procurement process that can make it difficult, or nearly impossible, to get services for children in a timely fashion.

“At no agency is [the procurement process] more painfully cumbersome, bureaucratic, and slow than in the DOE,” said Brooklyn Council member Lincoln Restler. “Frankly this situation underscores the urgent need for procurement reform.”

The allegations against Samuels, first reported by independent journalist Sue Edelman and The New York Post, stem from his recent tenure leading Manhattan’s District 3, which spans the Upper West Side and parts of Harlem.

The city Special Commissioner of Investigation, or SCI, found last year that Samuels’ former deputy superintendent, Mariela Graham, improperly split a larger contract with a vendor into smaller chunks to avoid a $25,000 competitive bidding threshold, a practice referred to as contract splitting. The vendor hired and placed language teachers in the district.

The investigation began after school officials reported that one of the teachers employed by the vendor was barred from working in city public schools because of past sexual misconduct.

Samuels wasn’t mentioned in SCI’s 2025 report, but City Council testimony from Sean Kreyling, the owner of the vendor, along with emails shared by the vendor with SCI and viewed by Chalkbeat, suggest Samuels approved a similar arrangement with the same company the year before.

Asked to confirm if Samuels is under investigation, SCI spokesperson Anna Correa said the agency is “aware of these new allegations, and will handle them accordingly.”

Several people familiar with the situation said that Samuels and Graham were scrambling to find language teachers to place at schools receiving large numbers of migrant students. Language and bilingual teachers are typically among the most difficult positions to fill for New York City schools.

Graham did not respond to a request for comment.

Samuels, who has declined to answer specific questions about the episode, has defended himself.

“While I regret this lapse in procedure,” he said in a statement, “the actions in question were undertaken in pursuit of educational opportunities for children — not for personal gain or to benefit anyone other than our schoolchildren.”

The $25,000 threshold: A safeguard or bottleneck?

Contracts make up a large and growing share of the city Education Department’s budget, increasing from about $3.2 billion in 2014 to roughly $13 billion, according to the City Council.

Mamdani took aim at the system as a mayoral candidate, pledging to “overhaul procurement infrastructure” across the Education Department and cut contracted spending by 10%.

The $25,000 threshold Samuels is accused of violating is a key safeguard meant to ensure that vendors getting large sums of taxpayer money have been thoroughly vetted and are offering the best prices.

To make a purchase above $25,000, a principal or other official is required to use a vendor that has a contract with the central procurement office.

But the process of getting a central contract can take up to a year, according to city officials. Some vendors don’t even attempt it and others give up, vendors and officials told Chalkbeat. Several principals said they sometimes can’t find the services they need from a contracted vendor, and those are often more expensive than non-contracted vendors.

Kreyling, the owner of the language teacher company involved in the District 3 allegations, said he began the process to get centrally approved and waited months before giving up.

“It’s a pretty arduous process … chaotic and disorganized,” Kreyling told Chalkbeat, noting that in other districts outside of New York City, he can get a fully signed contract within a month.

City Council Speaker Julie Menin, who is pushing for a more thorough audit of Education Department contracts, said during a hearing last week that she worries the practice of contract splitting may be more common than is known.

“This incident, of course, raises concern that there may be more widespread practice of contracts being broken up to avoid appropriate spending scrutiny,” she said.

A separate 2025 SCI report on the practice of contract splitting pointed to eight past investigations since 2023 that found school officials or vendors skirting the competitive bidding rules, including the one into Graham and Kreyling.

Last year, about $386 million of total contract spending came through purchases of less than $25,000, according to SCI.

Allegations highlight tension between scrutiny and efficiency

The reactions to the allegations against Samuels highlight a key tension Mamdani will face as he seeks to reform the procurement system: balancing the need for stricter oversight with making the process more efficient for schools.

Some lawmakers and advocates have argued that the allegations against Samuels show the need for tightened guardrails.

Lawmakers, including City Council Education Committee Chair Eric Dinowitz, a Bronx Democrat, have argued that if Graham and Samuels had gone through the vendor approval process, it would have prevented the teacher with the past misconduct charges from ending up in a classroom. SCI did not explicitly make that assertion in its report.

Emails between Kreyling and Education Department officials shared with Chalkbeat suggest that vendors with city approval must run their employees through Education Department background checks.

The SCI report noted, however, that principals are required to conduct background checks on any vendor employee who interacts with students — something that didn’t happen in the District 3 case.

Many principals and Education Department officials told Chalkbeat they view the allegations against Samuels as an example of an educator working within a broken system to try to quickly get services for kids.

“Hiring foreign language teachers is an incredibly difficult task,” said a high level Education Department official who requested anonymity. “It sounds like this district was trying desperately to provide services for their students.”

The situation points to the need to make the process speedier and less bureaucratic, school leaders said.

Some suggested raising the $25,000 cap, a threshold that hasn’t changed in years. Others said the process to approve a vendor needs to be faster and less complicated. That could also increase competition and lower prices.

Lindsey Oates, who started this week as the deputy chancellor for the Division of Finance, Administration, & Human Resources and will oversee procurement reform, said she will try to “strike the appropriate balance of appropriate oversight of taxpayer dollars, as well as streamlining our operations.”

Education Department officials have offered few details about how they’re approaching procurement reform. But officials say they’re hoping a reorganization to bring the finance and procurement teams under the same deputy chancellor will streamline the contracting process for schools while helping to strengthen accountability.

SCI made several recommendations in its 2025 report to crack down on contract splitting, including significantly ramping up training for principals and other officials making purchasing decisions, as well as increasing central staff in charge of monitoring non-contracted vendors.

Education Department officials said at last week’s council hearing that many of those recommendations would require financial resources the agency doesn’t have.

In the specific District 3 case, SCI found that Kreyling “conspired” with Graham on the contract splitting and recommended that the Education Department stop working with his companies. Kreyling told Chalkbeat he was following the lead of city officials and didn’t know he was violating any rules.

Investigators said Graham, Samuels’ deputy, displayed “astoundingly poor judgment” and recommended her termination. They referred the case to the Manhattan District Attorney. The District Attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Education Department general counsel Liz Vladeck told lawmakers that the SCI report contained no allegations of illegal activity. The department opted to suspend Graham for two weeks instead of firing her, she said. A source familiar with her current role said Graham was recently promoted to senior director of strategy for Samuels.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NYC school budgets won’t face cuts next year (for now) despite falling enrollment

2026-06-07T20:14:13+00:00

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Despite shrinking enrollment, New York City schools will not see their initial budgets take a hit next school year.

New York City principals are soon expected to receive their budgets for the 2026-27 school year, and schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels gave them a heads up that even if they’re projected to have fewer students, their budgets won’t drop.

Though school budgets are typically tied to student head count, the city began its “hold harmless” policy — propping up school budgets despite enrollment losses — during the height of the pandemic. The Education Department’s coffers were flush with billions in one-time federal relief funding, and officials were concerned about catching kids up after prolonged learning disruptions. So they kept budgets steady even as students left the nation’s largest school system.

Over the past six years, the city has spent $1.6 billion to stave off enrollment-related cuts, according to the Citizens Budget Commission, a watchdog group. Meanwhile, K-12 schools have lost nearly 10% of students during that time, dropping below 800,000 students this school year — and declines are expected to continue. The decision from Samuels pushes any eventual financial reckoning further down the road.

“Our hold harmless policy began during the pandemic to provide stability amid a crisis—and while we are no longer in a pandemic, stability and predictability remain critically important for our school communities,” Samuels wrote in a Sunday email to principals.

“To that end,” he continued, “we will be holding schools harmless for their SY26-27 initial budget allocations. This investment will provide stability and predictability for school communities as principals plan staffing, programming, and supports for the upcoming school year.”

Some school funding experts warn against allowing budgets to drift away from schools’ actual enrollment, which disproportionately benefits schools that have lost the most students. But some educators and parent leaders note that many schools have come to rely on the money and abruptly removing it could force them to scale back programs such as music and art and let go of teachers.

Plus, cuts are likely to invite backlash and are politically unpopular, especially as Mayor Zohran Mamdani vowed to prioritize funding for public schools on the campaign trail. When former Mayor Eric Adams initially began winding down the program, the blowback ballooned, with families making T-shirts declaring that Adams defunded their schools. Subsequently, Adams decided to keep propping up budgets.

Samuels’ email made no mention of what the city will do midyear, when it will be faced with another inflection point whether to hold schools harmless if their enrollment is lower than anticipated. Again, before the pandemic, the city would claw back money in the middle of the school year if a school’s roster failed to match projections.

But principals this year did not have to give back money despite nearly two-thirds of the city’s roughly 1,600 schools having fewer students than projected. The policy cost the city more than $250 million.

Samuels is expected to testify Monday before City Council on the budget.

“Going forward,” he told principals, “I am committed to engaging with you and your school communities about our school budgets—to ensure both long-term fiscal sustainability and comprehensive school support.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Help us investigate: Where do you see waste in NYC’s $45 billion school budget?

2026-05-29T17:59:28+00:00

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In Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s quest to trim spending from New York City’s massive municipal budget, there’s no bigger target than the Education Department.

The department’s nearly $45 billion budget is the largest of any agency by far, making up roughly a third of the city’s entire budget.

The city schools budget has even become a national talking point for critics of Mamdani. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos recently said if he ran his company like New York City ran its schools, it would mean charging customers a $100 fee while taking six weeks to deliver a package.

Now, as Mamdani doubles down on his waste-trimming efforts with a new Commission on Government Efficiency, Chalkbeat wants to better understand what the Education Department’s massive budget looks like to the people working in and attending the system every day, and where you see the biggest potential savings.

The size and complexity of the budget is difficult to comprehend. It covers everything from staff and supplies at roughly 1,600 district schools as well as the educations of hundreds of thousands of students in charter and private schools and childcare centers. It spends billions on transportation, food, and maintenance.

So far, Mamdani’s biggest cost-cutting plan for the Education Department comes from hundreds of millions in expected savings from delayed implementation of the state’s class size law. He’s also pledged to trim spending on students with disabilities attending private schools. City officials are counting on $100 million in savings from “improved financial controls” and tens of millions more from consolidating or eliminating unnecessary contracts, according to budget documents.

Chalkbeat wants to hear from you, since where you see the biggest spending inefficiencies could look very different depending on your role in the system.

For parents and students, what are the programs and materials at your school that feel least useful? For teachers and school staff, are boxes of new textbooks or laptops gathering dust? For administrators, are there projects, materials or contracts whose costs seem too high? And if you’re involved in larger contracts or spending decisions, are there instances where the city is paying for duplicate services, or contracting out tasks it could do in-house for cheaper?

By getting a ground-level view of Education Department spending, Chalkbeat hopes to help create a clearer picture of where the city’s money goes, and we need your help in piecing that image together.

Please fill out the form below. If you are having trouble viewing this form, go here.

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Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NYC after-school contract shakeup sparks fury after beloved, long-term providers are ousted

2026-05-21T21:32:12+00:00

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A reshuffling of contracts for New York City’s sprawling free after-school program has separated some schools from beloved, longstanding providers, sparking fury from parents, program staffers, and school administrators.

The changes came as part of the city’s first attempt in years to re-bid contracts for community-based organizations, who get city funding to operate the COMPASS after-school program for more than 100,000 elementary and middle school students.

Re-bidding the contracts allowed the city to expand the program by 10,000 seats and make long-needed changes to providers’ pay rates, which now come out to around $4,000 to $7,000 per student depending on age, city officials and providers said.

But the new contracts, which were announced earlier this month and run through 2032, in some cases edged out providers who have been working with schools for more than a decade, and had the support of principals and families.

In Manhattan, multiple middle schools that have long worked with the organization Manhattan Youth were assigned new providers starting this fall, according to a petition and joint letter from parent leaders across the schools.

“Making sweeping changes to successful and trusted afterschool programs without transparency, stakeholder engagement, or demonstrated justification does not serve students or families,” wrote the parents, some of whom staged protests Thursday afternoon.

It wasn’t immediately clear how many programs citywide were turned over to new providers.

Chantal Alba, a spokesperson for the Youth and Community Development Department, said “most” of the 927 schools with after-school contracts are continuing on with their existing provider – 71 schools are opening a program for the first time next year.

“DYCD understands how important long-standing afterschool relationships are to families, and we recognize that a change in provider can feel disruptive,” Alba wrote. “These transitions are the result of a standardized competitive process, not a reflection on the value a particular organization has brought to a school community.”

Providers who lost out on contracts at schools where they’ve been successfully working for years said they’ve gotten no clear explanation on why they weren’t selected.

“We’re all very confused,” said Manuela Garcia, a program director for the Coalition for Hispanic Family Services at Louis Armstrong Middle School in East Elmhurst, Queens. Garcia’s program has operated an arts-focused after-school program at Louis Armstrong for 12 years, but lost out to a larger provider in this year’s contract re-procurement.

“We did everything we were supposed to do,” she said. “Why are we being uprooted … to bring somebody else brand new to start over?

New rules, little transparency

In past years, providers had to secure a signed agreement from a principal before applying for a contract at that school, giving the principal broad discretion to select a provider. This year, principals could rank multiple providers, according to people familiar with the process. In some cases, they didn’t get their top choice.

“Despite our school clearly identifying Manhattan Youth as the best fit for our community, a different provider was selected,” Computer School principal Jessica Shalom wrote to families last weekend, according to a copy of the letter shared with Chalkbeat.

In seeking “clarification” from the Department of Youth and Community Development, Shalom said she “received dismissive responses that failed to acknowledge the depth of our current partnership with Manhattan Youth and the significant impact this potential change would have on our community.”

Alba, the DYCD spokesperson, said more than 80% of principals received their first- or second-choice provider. Asking principals to rank programs allowed “more providers to participate … while still ensuring principal input is reflected,” she said.

“DYCD must balance principal preferences with competitive scoring, capacity, and provider diversity,” Alba added.

Severing longstanding relationships between providers and schools isn’t the only concern. Providers that are losing their contracts after the summer might struggle with retaining staff for Summer Rising, the city’s free summer program, said Nora Moran, policy and advocacy director at United Neighborhood Houses, an umbrella organization for several after-school organizations.

She also wondered if the city’s notoriously slow contracting process would be able to meet the demand of having to certify so many new contracts for the fall.

Still, the outdated contracts needed to be rebid, Moran said. And throughout the bidding process, the city had been open about wanting to diversify the pool of providers.

While that’s a “good goal,” Moran said, it’s a “hard situation all around” because there are “always winners and losers” in a procurement process.

“In some circumstances, these are really longstanding relationships, and so for certain schools, it is going to be a really big change,” she said. “Also, there’s new opportunity that comes with new providers, and some organizations are happy that they’re going to have the chance to expand their work.”

Particular after-school programs are often a draw for families

Families at some of the schools switching providers say the shift could significantly diminish their kids’ school experience — and undercut one of the reasons they chose the school in the first place.

Alexandra Cardasis, whose daughter is in sixth grade at Simon Baruch Middle School, compared Manhattan Youth’s vast offerings, including theater and a multi-school sports league, to “a suburban experience at a large school.”

“When you’re trying to keep like families in the public school system,” she added, “these are the things that make people want to come.”

Families at Simon Baruch are trying to fight back, said Gilberte Lal, president of the school’s parent-teacher association, who planned to deliver about 400 student letters to the city.

“The anxiety that these children feel wondering what’s going to happen to their mentors, it’s heartbreaking,” said Lal.

Out of the school’s roughly 1,000 students, all but about 36 participate in Manhattan Youth’s array of 50 weekly offerings, from ceramics and nail art to orchestra, drama, and Dungeons and Dragons. The program also offers many teams that are part of the Middle School Athletic League — that would cost the school about $200,000 to cover next year, Lal said.

The program has 90 staffers, three of whom are full-time, and many of whom are paraprofessionals or teachers at the school.

The new provider, the Imogen Roche Foundation, which focuses on social-emotional health, has mainly worked with elementary schools, raising concerns among families whether it can quickly scale up a sophisticated program for middle schoolers.

At Louis Armstrong, an arts-focused middle school in Queens, the Coalition for Hispanic Family Services over years built a theater-based after-school program that perfectly fit the school’s needs, said Garcia, the program director.

The program has developed partnerships with professional theater organizations, worked closely with school staff to build a shared performing arts program, and routinely connects students to outside services like therapy, access to food, and healthcare, Garcia said. She’s now working on gathering documentation she can use to support an appeal of DYCD’s contract decision.

“This has been really devastating,” she said, “and I’ve taken it upon myself to organize the community.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Albany budget deal gives Mamdani 2-year mayoral control extension, boosts funding for needy students

2026-05-20T20:04:12+00:00

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani will maintain control of the nation’s largest school system for the next two years under state legislation unveiled on Wednesday.

And the state will boost funding for homeless students, those in foster care, and English language learners, sending $143 million more to New York City’s public schools.

Those measures are part of the state budget, which is seven weeks late. The agreement, reached between Gov. Kathy Hochul and the leaders of the state Senate and Assembly, is expected to win approval from state lawmakers.

Here’s what we know so far about the budget deal.

Extending mayoral control, no strings attached

Mamdani will retain control of New York City’s public schools through June 2028, less than the four-year extension the mayor and Hochul pushed for. The governance system gives the mayor power to pick the majority of the school board, appoint the school system’s leader, and set the policy direction of the district.

The extension did not come with any tweaks to the city’s school board to shift the balance of power away from the mayor — a break from prior budget deals. Previously, state lawmakers added board members who represent parents and limited the mayor’s power to remove his own appointees, among other changes. (The mayor still appoints a majority of the board.)

Extending the status quo is notable because Mamdani campaigned on overhauling mayoral control to give families and educators more power, but he backtracked just before taking office and has since lobbied state lawmakers to keep the system in place.

Mayoral control is often treated as a bargaining chip in negotiations between the mayor and Albany, and the two-year extension means Mamdani will have to persuade state lawmakers to extend his power halfway through his first term. That will give lawmakers an opportunity to examine the mayor’s education agenda, which has yet to come into focus.

“We did not really hear anything on the campaign, and we’re still not hearing anything now” on the mayor’s K-12 education priorities, said NeQuan McLean, the president of the Community Education Council in Brooklyn District 16.

McLean said he hoped for changes to mayoral control, including giving local education councils more of a say in school mergers, closures, and decisions to open new campuses. “This has been one of the most disappointing sessions that I’ve seen,” he said.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the city teachers union and mayoral control critic, hopes the state makes changes to the system in the future.

“Over the next two years, we will continue to work with Mayor Mamdani and the members of the state legislature to try to find ways to bring more parent and educator voices into policy decisions,” he said in a statement.

More money for high-need students

Updates to how the state doles out public school funding will mean more money for districts that enroll children with higher needs. Officials are adding new weights to Foundation Aid, the state’s main school funding formula, that will increase funding based on the number of students who live in temporary housing and are in foster care. It is also boosting an existing weight for English learners.

That is expected to generate the $143 million in additional state funding for New York City public schools, where more than 154,000 children do not have permanent housing and about 1 in 6 are learning English as a new language.

Overall, the state is planning to send New York City nearly $11 billion through the Foundation Aid formula, an increase of 5% or nearly $538 million.

“We appreciate that the education budget includes long overdue updates to the State’s education funding formula, which has remained largely unchanged for almost two decades,” said Maria Odom, executive director of Advocates for Children of New York, which pushed for more funding for students with greater needs.

Still, the budget deal does not include another change advocates hoped for: an update in how state officials calculate costs in New York City, which has not been changed in decades. Tweaks in last year’s budget deal resulted in the city’s public schools receiving $314 million less from the state than it might have, though the city still received more funding overall.

Budget deal includes other education measures

State officials will soon start nudging school districts to adopt “best practices” in elementary school math instruction that will be determined by the state’s education commissioner. By September 2027, school districts will have to verify that their approaches to K-5 math instruction meet those practices and are part of an “aligned plan designed to improve student mathematics outcomes.”

New York City’s Education Department is already in the process of revamping middle school math instruction and has standardized its Algebra 1 high school curriculum, but has yet to make significant changes to elementary school math coursework.

State lawmakers also extended the deadline for a state mandate to transition to electric school buses.

Changes to class size law up in the air

State officials have been considering a delay to a major state mandate that requires New York City to cap class sizes to between 20 to 25 students depending on the grade level.

Mamdani has banked on the timeline change to help save hundreds of millions of dollars in the short term as the city faced a multi-billion dollar budget gap. State officials have yet to formally approve any changes to the class size law, which was passed in 2022 and must be fully phased in over the next two years.

“Negotiations continue and may result in legislation in the next couple of weeks,” state Sen. John Liu, an architect of the class size law, said in a Wednesday press release.

Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Mamdani scales back promise for swifter class size reductions, anticipating state to delay law

2026-05-12T23:53:34+00:00

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After issuing dire warnings about a multi-billion budget gap, Mayor Zohran Mamdani expects to save hundreds of millions from a pending deal to delay a state mandate to reduce New York City’s class sizes.

Mamdani’s preliminary budget in February included $543 million anticipating a hiring spree of about 6,000 teachers. On Tuesday, his executive budget proposal earmarked $122 million to hire 1,000 educators.

“We have asked Albany to extend the deadline to meet this mandate,” Mamdani said. “It will allow us to implement an achievable plan that better serves both our students and our teachers.”

The move marks a major reversal from his pledge on the campaign trail to swiftly reduce class sizes.

The mayor’s latest budget proposal includes other new details about his spending priorities for the nation’s largest school district. He vowed to address the ballooning costs to the Education Department of private special education services “head on.” And he also revealed plans to boost wages of some early childhood education workers.

Still, several education programs are on track to run out of funding this summer that were not included in the mayor’s budget.

Here are four key takeaways from the mayor’s budget proposal, which is subject to negotiations with the City Council. A final deal is expected by July 1.

Plugging the city’s budget deficit hinges on a delay to the class size law

Mamdani has long supported state’s class size law capping classrooms at 20 to 25 students depending on the grade level. Though he plans to slash his initial teacher hiring pot of money, he indicated on Tuesday that he is adding $1.5 billion in capital funding for the School Construction Authority to help the city comply with the class size mandate.

“Make no mistake: We are fully committed to fulfilling the state mandate in a meaningful way on a realistic timeline that New Yorkers can actually trust,” Mamdani said.

But meeting next school year’s goal — of having 80% of classrooms comply with the law — would be a major challenge, education officials previously warned. Many schools don’t have enough space to shrink classes and finding thousands of new teachers remains a hurdle. Officials have been reluctant to pursue other solutions such as restricting enrollment at crowded campuses.

State Sen. John Liu, an architect of the law, said he expects the legislature to tweak the policy as part of the state’s forthcoming budget. Instead of requiring that 80% of classrooms comply, the state would mandate 70%, with the expectation that all classrooms would meet the caps over the next two or three years.

Even that could pose a strain: This year, the city only surpassed its 60% target after issuing exemptions for thousands of classrooms.

“The intent is to see 100% compliance by the end of this mayor’s first term,” Liu told Chalkbeat on Tuesday, noting that he is confident those changes will come in the state budget, now more than a month overdue. “Mayor Mamdani has made clear he’s committed to 100% compliance.”

City officials say they’re getting serious about private special education costs

Mamdani said he would take on the growing cost in the Education Department’s budget of private services for students with disabilities, vowing to beef up public programs and save $149 million in the process.

The city’s Education Department now spends well over $1 billion — or roughly $1 out of every $40 in its budget — on private special education services.

A majority of that cost is private school tuition and support for families who contend the city can’t serve their children in a public school. Those families are overwhelmingly white, a recent Chalkbeat analysis found. Mamdani said the city is investing in more public programs to lure them back into the system. Budget documents show the city is spending $67 million next year in new funding for preschool special education, a chronic shortage area.

Another big chunk comes from families in private schools who never considered a public school but nonetheless have a right to tutoring, speech therapy, and other services financed by the city. The city is planning to spend $86 million to shore up its ability to provide those services directly rather than relying on private providers, budget documents show.

“We are investing in special education services across the five boroughs so that families can get the support they need inside the public school system,” the mayor said. “That means better outcomes for families, fewer unnecessary lawsuits, and long-term savings for our city.”

Previous administrations have made similar promises, and costs have continued to rise.

More money for early childhood education

Mamdani’s budget announcement includes more than $100 million in new early childhood spending. The city is committing $40 million to provide a roughly 2% across-the-board raise for workers at community organizations contracting with the city Education Department for programs like 3-K and prekindergarten.

Those organizations have been locked in the same contract without pay increases since 2021. Their contracts were set to expire this year, but officials announced a two-year extension. The $40 million will ensure workers see a modest pay bump while the new contracts are crafted.

The money will also provide larger pay increases for non-unionized workers to bring them up to par with staffers who are part of a labor union, said Nora Moran, the director of policy and advocacy at United Neighborhood Houses, an umbrella organization for early childhood providers.

“The Mayor has clearly listened to feedback from parents, educators, and advocates,” Moran said in a statement.

The budget also adds $67 million to fund preschool special education seats, an area where the city has historically fallen short. Another $2 million will fund a fledgling free childcare program for municipal workers.

Funding for other education programs is in limbo

The mayor’s latest proposal restored $31 million in funding for Learning to Work, a program that pays for internships, social workers, and guidance counselors for students at risk of dropping out. The program has routinely faced the possibility of budget cuts each year only for funding to be restored at the last minute. Now, City Hall is vowing to guarantee funding in future years.

But other programs remain on the chopping block.

Students and advocates rallied in March outside the Education Department's headquarters to save the Learning to Work program.

Mamdani’s budget does not include $12 million for a wraparound program for students with disabilities who have sensory issues that interfere with school performance. Nor does it include $6 million for restorative justice, a conflict resolution approach that prioritizes talking through problems rather than punitive discipline.

A $5 million mental health initiative that provides students with faster access to counseling and other support at about 50 high-need schools also remains in limbo, though it has been restored in prior years during negotiations with City Council.

“Students, families, educators, and providers want assurance that they can continue relying on these programs in future years,” the Coalition for Equitable Education Funding, which represents over 120 organizations, said in a statement.

Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

The AI rebellion grows in NYC: Over 100 New Yorkers demand moratorium on AI use in schools at marathon board meeting

2026-05-01T19:15:03+00:00

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Despite New York City’s last-minute withdrawal of a controversial proposal for a new artificial intelligence-centered high school, parents, students, and educators packed this week’s school board meeting to speak on AI anyway.

More than 100 New Yorkers testified at a nearly seven-hour-long meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy, or PEP, earlier this week.

Community members repeatedly argued that the Education Department is rolling out AI tools without clear rules, transparency, or adequate knowledge of the technology. Students said AI was already reshaping classrooms, and surveillance practices, like the digital bathroom hall pass technology, are already in use at 150 city schools. Educators expressed concern that the increasing use of various technologies in schools conflicts with the preliminary AI schools policy the city released in March.

One parent from Park Slope approached the microphone with her two toddlers in tow, holding one in her arm while clasping the other tightly by the hand.

“I’ve never been an activist before, but I feel so strongly about this: It is starting. Gen Z is turning against AI; I’m turning against AI. The city is telling us that AI is inevitable, but won’t tell me what devices and applications my children are using. You tell us you are spending our money to give artificial intelligence to our children?” she said to a chorus of cheers at Wednesday night’s packed meeting.

The PEP’s voting agenda had little to do with AI. It centered on the Education Department’s capital plan, the estimated budget for the coming year, and the updated Fair Student Funding weights that shape how money flows to schools. The panel also voted on 30 separate contract agreements, from cafeteria equipment repairs to special education services.

But the bulk of the seven-hour meeting involved parents, children, and educators arguing against the city’s spending on AI and educational technology contracts and the city’s preliminary AI policy. Although the Next Generation High School proposal was removed from Wednesday’s agenda following backlash over its AI focus and selective admissions, speakers said those concerns would extend to future school plans.

“Many feel AI is teaching a dangerous message that results matter more than the learning process. Some of the most important learning happens when students struggle, make mistakes, ask questions, and improve over time,” said student panel member Julia Nasef, of Staten Island’s Tottenville High School.

AI discussions surface issues with current Department of Education process

Throughout the night, speakers expressed waning confidence in the Education Department’s vetting process for AI tools and its ability to protect students, educators, and families from a complex and rapidly-changing technology.

Most of the speakers were opposed to any AI in the classroom.

Panel for Educational Policy Chair Greg Faulkner admitted on Wednesday that he was a “baby boomer” with limited understanding of AI, and that he wanted more thorough engagement with both the community and Education Department in future AI-related proposals.

But he also thought that Chancellor Kamar Samuel’s move to pull the AI-focused school proposal for Next Generation High School aligns with the schools chief’s priority to better engage and respond to the needs of local communities.

“Under previous administrations, the general assumption was that the panel votes yes on all DOE proposals. But the chancellor’s decision and the panel’s back-and-forth discussion on Wednesday showed us that the old model isn’t working anymore,” Faulkner told Chalkbeat on Thursday.

Faulkner said the “AI question” has him considering proposing changes to some of the Education Department’s policy-making processes. He said he would like the panel to work more closely with the department’s AI policy authors — the names of whom are not public — so the panel can get up to speed on AI research and better share community concerns.

Education Department officials said that the initial AI guidance was shaped by the Department’s central Academics and Instruction team, with input from stakeholders and various internal Department subcommittees.

“We have not had any briefings on AI research, and while I am concerned about a moratorium, I don’t know enough about this technology,” said Faulkner.

Nasef, the student PEP member, said at the meeting that many of her peers acknowledge that AI can be helpful when used “intentionally” to help them understand math and science concepts, for example.

She urged the panel to “support clear, student‑centered guidelines for AI implementation.”

The city’s framework, released last month, did not include guidance on how or if students can use AI for homework, nor did it differentiate AI use for students in different grades

Panel greenlights controversial tech contracts as AI policy lags

Of the 30 contract proposals up for a vote, three included three educational technology products. Just one was voted down.

One of the contracts approved covered the full line of K-12 digital learning products from Kaplan, a global educational services company that has recently rolled out AI add-ons in their digital test prep products. Several speakers who testified at Wednesday’s meeting mentioned the company’s recent privacy breach affecting the personal information of 1.4 million people across seven states. Despite those concerns, the PEP approved the company’s $500,000 contract.

A representative for Age of Learning, an AI-based software tailored to early childhood education up for contract vote, spoke at the meeting. He assured panel members that the software could be “turned off at any point” because “teachers have complete control of what is going on in the classroom.” This was the only contract that the PEP voted against.

Naveed Hasan, the panel’s de-facto technology expert who had previously supported the AI-focused high school, announced at the meeting that he now supports a two-year moratorium on AI use in schools, saying the city needs more time to address data privacy infrastructure and learning concerns.

The term limits of all current panel members expire at the end of June. The Education Department’s full AI policy is also expected to be released that month, and the Education Department is asking families and educators for input on its early framework through May 8.

Lizzie Walsh is a Data Fellow at Chalkbeat New York. She reports on New York City education and produces data-driven stories across Chalkbeat’s national network. Contact her at ewalsh@chalkbeat.org.

Trump administration improperly canceled $36 million in school grants over trans policies, judge rules

2026-04-09T22:05:23+00:00

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The Trump administration improperly cut off tens of millions in grant funding from New York City’s public schools, a judge found this week, money that was yanked because of city policies protecting transgender students.

Manhattan federal Judge Arun Subramanian ruled that federal officials sidestepped required procedures that apply when cutting off funding under Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination at educational entities that receive federal funding.

The case is notable because it is the first known attempt by the Trump administration to cancel funding for New York City’s public schools under its contested interpretation of civil rights laws. It also represents a setback in the administration’s efforts to control school policies across the country on major culture war issues, including trans rights. Grants for school districts in Chicago and Fairfax, Virginia, were also discontinued.

The Trump administration held up funding to New York City through the U.S. Department of Education’s Magnet School Assistance Program, citing Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination at educational institutions receiving federal funding. Officials argued city policies that allow transgender students to participate in sports and use bathrooms and other school facilities in line with their gender identity violate those civil rights protections.

“When recipients of Federal funding require schools to treat ‘trans-identifying’ males as if they were ‘females,’ including in intimate traditionally sex-separate facilities, they defeat the very purpose of Title IX: to ensure equal opportunities for women while not jeopardizing their privacy, safety, or other rights,” Trump administration officials wrote to the city’s Education Department in September.

To keep the grant funding, federal officials pressured the city to overhaul their policies on transgender students. The city Education Department sued in October, arguing that revoking the magnet grant funding put “politics before public schools” and had no “valid substantive basis.” At stake is about $36 million in multi-year grants across 19 local public schools.

But in response to the city’s lawsuit, federal officials argued that they have discretion to withhold the funding and were not relying on Title IX. Officials must typically hold a hearing and file written reports with Congress, among other requirements, before withholding money under Title IX.

“It is undisputed both that defendants did not follow these statutory procedures, and that the procedures would apply if they non-continued the grants because of Title IX violations,” Subramanian wrote. The argument that the Trump administration was not relying on Title IX to withhold the money “flies in the face of the record.”

Subramanian’s decision did not address whether New York City’s policies violate Title IX — and it will likely not be the last word in this case. He ordered the Trump administration to make a new determination within 10 days about whether to continue the grants. If federal officials want to rely on Title IX, they must follow the correct procedures, he wrote.

Representatives of the federal Education Department did not respond to a request for comment.

The multi-year magnet grant funding is designed to help spur racial integration on several campuses by launching a range of new programs, including in journalism, math, science, performing arts, and civic activism, according to the city’s lawsuit.

Some legal observers said the favorable ruling for the city could embolden other school districts to push back against federal demands.

“We’ve seen the Trump administration take an ‘act first, ask for forgiveness’ approach, and that’s come back to hurt them,” including with universities, said Christopher Thomas, an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Florida.

He noted that aggressive legal action from the Trump administration can create a chilling effect among districts who may be wary of taking on the federal government.

“Hopefully decisions like this can thaw that chill,” he said.

The litigation included a related dispute about whether the Trump administration could claw back unspent magnet grant money from prior years. Federal officials ultimately agreed to allow the city to spend about $11 million in carryover funding, leaving about $36 million in doubt.

New York City Education Department General Counsel Liz Vladeck cheered Subramanian’s ruling.

“As NYCPS has said all along, arbitrarily cutting off critical funding for excellent school programming without providing the required process cannot stand, especially when that cut off is accompanied by an attack on the rights of our transgender and gender non-conforming students,” she wrote in a statement.

Vladeck added that the city “will continue to pursue all legal options” if federal officials decide to keep withholding funds.

The Trump administration has also pursued other avenues to pressure New York City to rethink its policies on transgender students. It launched a civil rights investigation in January into whether the city’s policies on transgender students’ access to sports violates Title IX. (Seventeen other educational institutions with similar policies were also under investigation.)

Federal officials did not respond to questions about the status of that investigation.

While the New York decision does not directly restore funding, it’s significant because Subramanian rejected the administration’s argument that the district court didn’t have jurisdiction and that the case belonged in a separate federal claims court that typically resolves contract disputes.

Following a Supreme Court decision last year involving National Institutes of Health grants, the administration has argued and some judges have agreed that lawsuits related to canceled grants should go through the claims court.

A similar legal argument is playing out in the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals after the Trump administration withheld money from five northern Virginia school districts that had transgender inclusion policies similar to New York City’s.

“What is happening in these school districts is not a contract question,” said Mary Rohmiller, an attorney and Title IX specialist who previously worked for the federal Education Department. “They are not asking the court to make the Department of Education give them money. They are asking the court to stop the Department of Education from imposing its unlawful interpretation of Title IX on them. And that is a question for a federal court to answer.”

The administration could still try to withhold money from New York City, but they would need to show a plausible reason for not continuing the grants that is not arbitrary and capricious, Rohmiller said.

This story has been updated with a response from the city’s Education Department, which was provided after this story first published.

National editor Erica Meltzer contributed.

Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Mamdani campaigned on fulfilling NYC’s class size mandate. So why is he pushing for a delay?

2026-04-02T17:21:12+00:00

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On the campaign trail, Mayor Zohran Mamdani vowed to take a state mandate to slash class sizes seriously, saying it “will transform our students’ ability to learn.”

“The question of compliance has too often been a negotiation,” Mamdani said on the first day of school in September.

Now, the Mamdani administration is seeking to do just that: negotiate with lawmakers in Albany to give the city more time to comply.

Some of the class size law’s key backers, including its legislative sponsor, seem willing to play ball. State Sen. John Liu, who sponsored the class size law, said he is open to allowing the city to reach full compliance over the next four years instead of the legally required two.

A deal to extend the class size law may come as part of the state budget — and lawmakers could use it as leverage as they simultaneously debate whether to extend Mamdani’s control of the school system, which expires at the end of June. (The state budget, which was due Wednesday, is delayed, and it’s unclear exactly when it will be finalized.)

On the campaign trail, Mamdani said it was “critical” to deliver smaller classes across the system. Here’s why as mayor he’s now pushing for an extension on the class size law.

Next year’s class size reduction target may be all but impossible

Under the law, 80% of the city’s public school classrooms must not exceed 20-25 students (depending on the grade level) by this coming school year. All schools must meet the caps by the 2027-28 school year. That goal may be out of reach: Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels recently told City Council members it would be “very difficult” to hit 80% compliance by September.

The city was only able to hit this year’s 60% benchmark by exempting thousands of classes from the law, despite spending hundreds of millions hiring more teachers and helping schools reconfigure space.

Failing to meet the benchmarks has big consequences. The law includes a provision that calls for hundreds of millions in state funding cuts if the city does not comply. Even the law’s biggest supporters, however, likely want to avoid that outcome.

A delay gives Mamdani some (temporary) budget relief

Mamdani is looking for all the savings he can to close a $5.4 billion budget gap by the city’s July 1 budget deadline. The mayor is banking on a delay of the class size law to help balance the city’s budget, the New York Times reported last week. (A City Hall spokesperson did not respond to questions about the mayor’s push for a delay.)

But having more time to comply with the law might only bring a temporary reprieve. Liu has floated requiring the city to bring 70% of classrooms into compliance this coming September — instead of 80% — with an additional 10% in each of the three following school years.

The state lawmaker pushed back against any move by the Mamdani administration to use the delay to save money.

“Adjustments in the timeline are not meant to provide fiscal relief,” Liu told Chalkbeat, noting that any extension is contingent on the city submitting more detailed plans about how they plan to comply with the law. The Mamdani administration deserves more time to comply because the city is “behind the curve due to the inactions of the previous administration,” Liu added.

The city’s teachers union, a key backer of the class size mandate, said they want to see a clearer plan from the Education Department to build more classroom space before supporting changes to the law. “Only when a real plan and a clear timeline are in place — not the usual School Construction [Authority] smoke and mirrors — would we have the information necessary to consider whether any amendments are needed,” United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said in a statement.

The mayor’s preliminary budget includes $543 million in additional city funding to reduce class sizes next fiscal year and $943 million in each of the three fiscal years after that — spending that could be pushed back if the legislature changes the timeline for implementing class size reductions. (City officials have previously projected the cost of fully implementing the law could be up to $1.7 billion a year for additional teachers with billions more in school construction costs on top of that.)

In its response to Mamdani’s preliminary budget, City Council indicated the city should convince state lawmakers to pony up for funding to comply with the law, relieving the city of some costs. The state assembly proposed sending the city $600 million to shrink classes, but it’s unclear if that will be included in the final state budget deal.

But in the mayor’s response criticizing the City Council’s plan, he accused them of seeking a delay to the class size law as their sole request from Albany — an ask that does not appear in the council’s budget proposal. Some observers noted that it’s a bizarre critique coming from Mamdani.

“Isn’t [Mamdani] also asking the state for more time to lower class size?” Leonie Haimson, the executive director of the advocacy group Class Size Matters, wrote on X.

A Mamdani spokesperson did not respond to questions about his false characterization of the council’s budget response.

City may want more time to come up with a comprehensive plan to shrink classes

Some of the law’s backers have urged the city to come up with more aggressive plans to build new classrooms for crowded schools that don’t have room to comply with the law.

But there are other solutions the city could use in some cases that would be far less expensive and take advantage of empty seats elsewhere: capping enrollment on crowded campuses or rezonings.

Samuels has also signaled he wants to prioritize using the city’s existing buildings before turning to school construction, though moves to cap enrollment on popular campuses would likely face pushback from families.

“The time in theory gives [Mamdani] the opportunity to get creative about space utilization [and] enrollment,” said Jonathan Collins, a political science and education professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College and a member of the city’s Panel for Educational Policy.

A delay could also give the city more time to grapple with one of the law’s core equity challenges: It requires significant new spending at relatively more affluent schools, where class sizes tend to be bigger, while more high-poverty schools already meet the caps.

A recent report from the Urban Institute, a think tank, found that the city’s lowest-poverty schools have received more funding to reduce class sizes than the city’s highest-poverty schools.

Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Mamdani ordered hundreds of millions in cuts to NYC Education Dept. Officials trimmed $58 million so far.

2026-03-25T21:47:46+00:00

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As part of his vow to close a multi-billion dollar budget gap, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on Wednesday an initial wave of spending cuts to New York City’s Education Department.

But the reductions represent a tiny fraction of what the mayor ordered the agency, along with others, to trim. Officials said they’re still combing through proposals to determine which cuts to approve.

The Education Department’s central offices are expected to rein in spending on supplies, professional development, and travel — adding up to $27.5 million this school year. Next school year, the city will “terminate underutilized contracts” and “implement spending caps” to save $30.3 million.

Overall, the Education Department is expected to find hundreds of millions in savings across this school year and next school year.

In an executive order issued earlier this year, Mamdani charged city agencies with appointing a chief savings officer to identify 1.5% in spending trims this fiscal year and 2.5% next fiscal year. Each savings officer was supposed to issue a public report March 20 laying out a plan for cuts. Spokespeople for Mamdani and the Education Department declined to release the agency’s plan, which was developed by Michael Cheatham, an acting deputy chancellor who oversees finance and is the department’s current savings officer.

A City Hall spokesperson said the Education Department would be expected to cut from the city’s contribution to the agency’s budget, which includes state, city, and federal funding. In total, that suggests the Education Department could be expected to cut over $800 million. Officials did not confirm an exact dollar amount figure the agency has been asked to cut.

“We’re only getting pieces of information,” said Ana Champeny, the vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission, a watchdog group. “They chose to release a very small subset of reductions that they say they’ve vetted so far.”

Education Department spokespeople declined to share which specific contracts are being cut, but said they reflect duplicative technology and software deals, consulting services that are no longer needed or can be offered internally, and certain administrative services.

City Hall announced more than $230 million in cuts across city agencies on Wednesday; officials said they are reviewing agency plans to cut $1.7 billion.

“Government must deliver for working people — and every dollar in our budget must work as hard as they do,” Mamdani said in a statement. “This is just the beginning of our work to improve service delivery and make city government the most efficient it can be.”

As the city’s largest agency, the Education Department is often a target for politicians who want to find efficiencies in city government. But finding cuts that don’t disrupt school programs is often easier said than done. Zeroing out funding for central staff and superintendent offices, for instance, would save about 1.2% of the agency’s budget.

“The mayor is clear that vital services need to be protected,” schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels said during a City Council hearing earlier this week. “We are cognizant of not impacting schools.”

On the campaign trail, Mamdani vowed to deploy a DOGE-style program to root out waste in the city’s public schools and “overhaul procurement infrastructure across the DOE.”

“For too long, we have allowed individuals like Elon Musk to pretend as if concerns of efficiency and waste are that of the right wing, when in fact, they should be the bedrock of any progressive politics,” Mamdani said in October.

Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Will NYC school budgets take a hit next year? Education Department officials are mum.

2026-03-23T22:26:39+00:00

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During a City Council hearing about Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s proposed budget for New York City’s public schools, one question came up again and again: Will school budgets take a hit next year?

It’s a question Education Department officials repeatedly sidestepped — but the answer may influence the fate of Mamdani’s first budget plan.

“There are not many individual issues that we will discuss at any of these hearings that impact our collective vote on the entire $127 billion dollar budget — that’s how important this is,” Brooklyn City Council member Lincoln Restler said during the budget hearing on Monday. “I really want to make sure we’re not in a situation where we’re seeing school budgets a day before the vote.”

As K-12 enrollment in the nation’s largest school system plunged nearly 10% over the past six years, dropping below 800,000, city officials spent $1.6 billion propping up budgets. That money staved off cuts that would typically have been automatic since school funding is typically tied to student headcount. But officials were reluctant to slash budgets while schools were scrambling to catch up students in the wake of the pandemic and the system had billions in one-time federal relief money at its disposal.

As the pandemic receded and federal funding dried up, however, it became difficult to change course. The Education Department kept school budgets relatively stable even as enrollment ticked down. This year, schools received over $388 million in various forms of relief to offset lower enrollment, the largest single-year sum since the pandemic hit.

Whether to keep school budgets steady and hold them “harmless” for enrollment declines is a politically tricky decision as the Mamdani administration has tasked city agencies to find savings to help fill a multi-billion dollar budget gap. When former Mayor Eric Adams initially began winding down the program, the blowback was so intense that City Council members later apologized for approving the city’s spending plan, and families made T-shirts declaring that Adams defunded their schools. Subsequently, Adams decided to keep propping up budgets.

Some school funding experts and budget watchdog groups say that it makes little sense to keep allowing school budgets to drift away from enrollment, disproportionately benefiting schools that have lost the most students. It’s a problem that was top of mind for multiple city lawmakers.

“Are we funding empty seats?” asked Queens City Council member Phil Wong. “And is there a long term plan to phase this out — or this is now a permanent policy?”

But educators and parent leaders have pointed out that many schools have come to rely on the money, and abruptly cutting it could force painful cuts to programs such as after-school, art, and music. Plus, cuts are likely to invite backlash, especially as Mamdani vowed to prioritize funding for public schools on the campaign trail.

At the City Council hearing on Monday, schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels stressed that “no decision has been made on hold harmless.”

“When we think about declining enrollment, we see the impact of that across our schools and specifically many of our schools who serve the most vulnerable populations,” Samuels added. The city should be “making sure those schools are sustainable and can withstand the impact of the declining enrollment.”

The “hold harmless” funding is a small share of the more than $16 billion the Education Department spent on K-12 schools and instruction this year. But on dozens of campuses, the money represents more than 10% of their initial allocations.

Officials said preliminary school budgets would be available later this spring, potentially leaving little time for lawmakers to negotiate the issue before the June 30 deadline to pass the city budget.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Mayoral control fight? Mamdani’s former Albany colleagues set stage for showdown on who runs NYC schools

2026-03-10T20:40:39+00:00

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s old colleagues in Albany aren’t going to let him maintain control of New York City schools without a fight.

Though the former state assemblyman campaigned on ending mayoral control as a way to give families and educators more of a say over the nation’s largest education system, Mamdani recently reversed course. Now, he faces an uphill battle with lawmakers in Albany to let him hold onto that power. Neither the Senate nor the Assembly proposed extending Mamdani’s control of city schools in separate budget proposals they released this week despite Gov. Kathy Hochul pitching a four-year extension of it in her budget proposal.

The state’s final budget is due April 1.

Albany gave New York City’s mayor control of the education system more than 20 years ago and has extended it ever since. The governance model — which is set to sunset on June 30 — allows the mayor to unilaterally appoint the schools chancellor, select a majority of the city’s school board, and generally set the district’s policy direction.

As Mamdani has moved full steam ahead on his plan to bring free child care to the city’s 2-year-olds and bolster the free program for 3-year-olds, he has come to appreciate having centralized control over the vast system.

“We would not have been able to launch 2-K or begin to fix the issues plaguing 3-K without mayoral control,” Mamdani said in a statement. “Mayoral control is key to delivering our affordability agenda, and I look forward to continuing to work with leaders in Albany to secure its extension.”

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio, who built the city’s massive prekindergarten program for 4-year-olds in 2014, said he would not have been able to launch that initiative without mayoral control.

“This is something that would really lead the nation” de Blasio told Chalkbeat about Mamdani’s child care push. “He’s not going to be able to do it, especially not quickly, if he doesn’t have sufficient capacity to run the system.”

Hochul had asked for a four-year extension in 2024 as well. Ultimately, state legislators approved a two-year extension with some changes to the school board, known as the Panel for Educational Policy. (The board grew to 24 appointees, with the addition of a chair nominated by Albany officials and selected by the mayor.)

Because the mayor appoints a majority of the members, the board has long been considered a rubber stamp for the chief executive. But the panel has increasingly displayed an independent streak, repeatedly bucking City Hall under former Mayor Eric Adams.

Another tweak from Albany lawmakers: Panel members serve one-year terms that run through June. That resulted in Mamdani inheriting Adams’ appointees, putting the new mayor in an awkward position of not fully controlling the school board for his first six months in office.

Adams, at the end of his term, ceded some of his control of the Panel for Educational Policy and left office with two mayoral vacancies. Mamdani has yet to fill those openings.

Still, there have been some new additions to the panel, including Jonathan Collins, an assistant professor of political science and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College. He was appointed by Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal.

“It’s an honor to be able to serve the kids of our city,” Collins wrote on LinkedIn on Tuesday, “and in this particular moment, I welcome the opportunity to model what true democratic school governance can look like.”

Advocates have continued to press the mayor to follow through on his promise to make the system more responsive to students, parents, and teachers.

State Sen. John Liu, who chairs the New York City Education Committee, said extending mayoral control would hinge on the city coming up with a plan to shrink class sizes to comply with state law. He also said he is speaking with Mamdani about possible changes to make the system more democratic.

“I’m in discussion with the mayor about what the plan is for class size reduction and what he envisions as a way to increase stakeholder input into how our schools are run,” said Liu, who did not offer more details.

When previously revealing his reversal on mayoral control, Mamdani pledged to incorporate community involvement, restructure parent meetings for community education councils to increase participation and awareness of these elected bodies, and improve the role of parent coordinators to be “meaningful” parent organizers instead of principals’ administrative coordinators.

Hundreds of parent coordinators wrote to Chalkbeat with their ideas for the mayor. They want better pay, more respect, a clearer job description — and they want to be included in decisions made about their jobs.

Albany signals support for Foundation Aid increase

Though lawmakers might not be on board for Mamdani’s plea for extending mayoral control, they do seem aligned with him on changing the formula that makes up the bulk of school budgets, funnelling more money to high-need schools.

The two-decades-old Foundation Aid formula was tweaked last year, but many advocates and politicians said the changes weren’t significant enough. Both houses called to add additional weights to the formula for homeless students,those in foster care, and children learning English as a new language.

High-need districts like New York City — which had about 154,000 students in temporary housing last year — stand to benefit if those weights are added. City schools last year received $314 million less than they would have under the original formula.

Compared to Hochul’s proposal to increase Foundation Aid across the state to $27.1 billion next fiscal year, the Assembly called for $27.8 billion, Speaker Carl Heastie said, while the Senate called for $27.4 billion.

Correction: March 10, 2026: This story initially said that Jonathan Collins was appointed to the Panel for Educational Policy by Mayor Zohran Mamdani. In fact, he was appointed by Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC spent $1.6 billion shielding schools from enrollment losses. Will Mamdani keep it up?

2026-02-13T22:59:35+00:00

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At the height of the pandemic, as enrollment in New York City’s public schools took a nosedive, officials kept school budgets steady.

City officials, who were flush with billions in one-time federal relief funding, didn’t want to take away resources from schools where students had experienced prolonged learning interruptions, even though budgets typically are tied to headcount.

But as the pandemic receded and federal funds dried up, officials continued to plow hundreds of millions of dollars into school budgets to protect them from cuts as enrollment losses deepened. This school year, the city is spending over $388 million to prop schools up — the largest annual sum since the pandemic hit.

Overall, officials have spent $1.6 billion to stave off enrollment-related cuts over the past six years, according to the Citizens Budget Commission, a watchdog group. Enrollment in the city’s public schools has dropped more than 8% during that time, to 884,000, and is projected to continue sliding.

Now, as Mayor Zohran Mamdani prepares to release his first budget proposal next week — and warns of a $7 billion gap — City Hall must decide whether to continue the so-called “hold harmless” policy. Some budget experts believe the mayor should wind it down, arguing that allowing school budgets to become increasingly detached from enrollment introduces inequities. Some schools may receive significantly more money per student because of enrollment losses rather than student need.

The issue is politically tricky for Mamdani, who vowed to prioritize funding for public education during the campaign. Some parent leaders worry that rolling back the policy would force some schools to cut key staff and programs. When former Mayor Eric Adams proposed bringing school spending in line with enrollment, he faced enormous backlash — prompting city officials to keep propping up school budgets throughout his term.

“Nobody gets points for taking money away,” said Amy Ellen Schwartz, a public policy professor at the University of Delaware who has studied the city’s policy of keeping budgets steady.

Roughly 450 of the city’s more than 1,500 schools received $127 million this year to help keep their budgets from dipping due to enrollment declines year over year. On top of that, city officials offered $262 million worth of mid-year budget relief to more than 1,000 schools because they welcomed fewer students than the city initially projected.

Schwartz said there were good reasons to keep school budgets steady during the pandemic. Schools may have otherwise been forced to cut teachers as their budgets shrank, making it more difficult to meet students’ mounting academic and social needs. But Schwartz said the city must begin to reckon with managing a smaller school system.

“I see no rationale for maintaining resources allocated to serve a population that isn’t there anymore,” she said.

Parent leaders raise concerns about cuts to school programs

Education Department officials have warned that the money may not last forever. Principals should “carefully program these resources while being mindful of long-term program sustainability,” officials said in a June budget memo. Yet on dozens of campuses, the funding represents more than 10% of the budgets they receive before the start of the school year, city data show.

Ana Champeny, the vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission, said the city should consider phasing the money out over multiple years. “The shock to some school budgets would be pretty severe” if the funding was yanked all at once. “Enrollment is decreasing and we need to think about what is the right way to manage the school system.”

School officials across the country are grappling with similar questions about how to reconcile enrollment declines in their budgeting decisions, said Jonathan Travers, the president of ERS, a nonprofit organization that advises district leaders.

The policy dilemma only gets more difficult to resolve the longer the hold harmless policy persists, he noted.

“The greater the divergence between a school’s funding and its enrollment, the more disruptive an eventual reconciliation is going to be,” Travers said.

Some parent leaders urged city officials to avoid making abrupt changes without educating school communities about the budget process or taking stock of how schools are using the money.

NeQuan McLean, the community education council president in Brooklyn’s District 16, said most schools in his district are struggling with low enrollment and use the money to help pay for essential programs, like music, art, and after-school. He worries that cuts could force campuses to slash those offerings, potentially making it even more difficult to attract families.

“We’re barely managing with what we have,” said McLean, whose district covers Bedford-Stuyvesant. “I just hope they don’t pull this money without real community engagement.”

He added that the city should consider rethinking the funding system more broadly to ensure schools can fund a range of staff and services regardless of how many students are enrolled.

Losing the hold harmless money could make those campuses more likely to be merged or closed, a strategy Chancellor Kamar Samuels has said may be necessary for campuses that struggle to afford basic programs.

Spokespeople for Mamdani and Samuels did not respond to questions about whether they intend to keep the hold harmless policy.

How Mamdani manages the public school system’s budget remains an open question. Experts expect his preliminary budget, due on Tuesday, to offer clues.

On the campaign trail, Mamdani singled out the Education Department as one area he hoped to find efficiencies and vowed to overhaul its procurement process.

The mayor has ordered each city agency to appoint a “chief savings officer” with an eye toward assessing programs and identifying wasteful spending. An Education Department spokesperson confirmed they have selected someone for the role. They declined to say who it is.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NYC might miss class size targets, education leaders say

2026-01-30T00:22:28+00:00

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Top state and city education leaders raised serious doubts about whether New York City schools will be able to meet the mandates requiring them to reduce class sizes.

New York State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa and New York City schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels testified Thursday at a hearing held by state legislators in response to the executive budget Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed last week.

Both officials said that the city would need a significant increase in funds, building space, and teachers to meet targets in a state law that requires schools to limit classes to between 20 and 25 students, depending on the grade. The law mandates that 80% of classes meet the limit next school year. State officials can withhold funding if the city’s Education Department fails to comply with the law.

The class size law, which was enacted in 2022 with a five-year implementation plan, requires city schools to ensure that the number of classrooms meeting the mandate increases by 20% each year.

New York City met this year’s target of 60% compliance, but only after declaring thousands of classes exempt from the cap, a Chalkbeat analysis found. The city spent approximately $450 million on a teacher hiring spree this fall to help meet that target.

“We are going to have a major difficulty getting to 80%,” Rosa said.

The city would need $602 million annually to hire 6,000 additional teachers on top of its standard annual hiring needs, Samuels told legislators. Even with that funding, there are not enough teachers in the workforce pipeline to meet the mandate and achieve the state’s class size goals, he added.

In addition to hiring more teachers, officials previously projected that the city would need to spend up to $18 billion on construction to create space for additional classrooms.

Samuels told legislators the city was looking for ways to better utilize existing school space, including by merging schools that have underutilized space with those that are overcrowded. The chancellor also said that of the city schools that don’t have enough space to meet the mandates, 25% need just one to four additional classrooms. So there may be solutions that don’t require new construction.

In response to legislators’ questions, Rosa repeated her previous concerns about the class size law’s unintended negative consequences for high-poverty schools. A 2023 Chalkbeat analysis found that because poorer schools already have smaller class sizes, they stand to benefit least from the cap. When there are hiring sprees, high-needs schools are also at risk of losing teachers to schools with more resources.

If new construction is targeted in neighborhoods with the highest enrollment, lower-income districts could lose out, Rosa said.

Beyond the class size cap hurdles, Rosa and Samuels also raised concerns about the state’s Foundation Aid formula, which accounts for the majority of education spending. Because of changes made to the formula last year, New York City lost out on $314 million it would have received without the changes, Samuels said. Barring legislation that would tweak the formula again, the city will take a similar hit this year.

Samuels called on the state to adjust the formula to provide additional funds for students in temporary housing, English language learners, and students with disabilities, as well as better accounting for the higher cost of doing business in expensive districts like New York City.

Abigail Kramer is a reporter in New York City. Contact Abigail at akramer@chalkbeat.org.

Mayoral control, school funding boost, and 2-care: What to know about Hochul’s budget proposal

2026-01-20T22:52:03+00:00

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Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed to extend mayoral control of New York City’s public school system, boost funding for public schools across the state, and pay for child care for 2-year-olds in the five boroughs — a major campaign promise of Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Those proposals came as part of Hochul’s executive budget plan on Tuesday, which drew some criticism from school funding advocates who raised fresh concerns that the state’s main funding formula is shortchanging New York City.

The governor acknowledged the challenges confronting the state in the face of significant cuts from the federal government and pledged her budget would be responsible but not “austere.” Overall, public schools across the state would get about $39.3 billion of the proposed $260 billion budget. The governor plans to increase school funding by $1.6 billion, or 4.3%.

“This budget invests in the next generation with nearly $40 billion in school aid, and we’re continuing to ensure that high need districts are funded appropriately,” Hochul said during her Tuesday budget address.

The governor’s proposal kicks off negotiations with lawmakers about how the state will allocate its budget for the next fiscal year, which begins in April.

Mamdani said in a statement that the governor’s proposal “makes meaningful investments that move us closer to an affordable and livable New York — especially through critical advancements in early childhood education.”

And while he noted that the state may be on “solid financial footing,” the city is not, he said, pointing a finger at his predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams. Mamdani is expected to release the city’s executive budget in April.

Here’s what you should know about the governor’s budget proposal and the reaction to it.

New York City schools stand to get more money, but no big changes to ‘sorely outdated’ formula

The Foundation Aid formula, which represents the bulk of state education spending, would send $15.1 billion to New York City under the governor’s plan. That’s 2.5% more than last year — or about $371 million — according to state budget documents.

The formula is designed to funnel more money to high-need districts, and Hochul tweaked it last year by updating a metric for student poverty. As a result of the governor’s changes, New York City schools last year received $314 million less than they would have under the original formula.

Experts, advocates, and state lawmakers are pushing for further changes to the two-decade-old formula to account for differences in costs like salaries in different parts of the state and adding additional weights for homeless students and those in foster care.

The formula “relies on outdated and incomplete measures of student need, and has not evolved to reflect rising costs, particularly in large urban districts,” the Coalition for Equitable Education Funding, a constellation of more than 100 education groups, wrote in a statement. “We are concerned that the budget proposal released today fails to address these shortcomings.”

A Hochul spokesperson noted that funding for the city’s schools has increased on the governor’s watch and blamed some of the funding fluctuations on enrollment declines.

Expanding access to child care

As the governor has pledged in recent months, her budget plan includes a push to significantly expand access to free and affordable child care and early education. Hochul proposed to increase state child care spending by $1.7 billion, bringing the total to $4.5 billion.

That spending would include $73 million this year for New York City to roll out a new 2-Care program, with a commitment to invest $500 million over two years. 2-Care is expected to create 2,000 new child care seats for 2-year-olds in high-need areas of the city in the fall, and then grow to 8,000 seats next year. Mamdani said he will make the program available to all of the city’s 2-year-olds by the end of his first term.

However, many early childhood teachers and advocates say that the expansion will fail unless the city fixes problems in its existing early education system. Currently, large disparities in teacher pay make it difficult for community-based child care centers to hire and keep staff, and there is a severe shortage of seats for kids with developmental delays and disabilities.

Both Hochul and Mamdani have promised to make programs available to students with disabilities, “but past expansions of early childhood education have shown that good intentions are no guarantee of equity,” wrote Maria Odom, the executive director of Advocates for Children of New York, in a statement.

“3-K is not ‘for all’ if three-year-olds with autism are sitting at home because there are no classes that can meet their needs,” Odom continued.

Statewide, Hochul has said she wants to make Pre-K available to every 4-year-old in the state by the 2028-29 school year. To that end, her budget proposes increasing per-seat funding to a minimum of $10,000 this year.

The executive budget also proposes a 40% increase to funding for child care vouchers, which are available to families below earning 85%of the state median income. Total funding this year would come to $3 billion.

A 4-year extension of mayoral control

Hochul is pushing for a four-year extension of mayoral control, which would give Mamdani authority over the nation’s largest school system for his entire first term, Blake Washington, the governor’s budget director, told reporters in a Tuesday briefing.

In 2024, Hochul proposed a four-year extension of mayoral control, which grants the mayor power to appoint a majority of the city’s school board, appoint the schools chancellor, and generally set the district’s policy direction. The final budget included a two-year extension.

Mamdani campaigned on ending mayoral control to give families and educators more of a say over the education system, but he recently reversed course. He must now persuade lawmakers in Albany to extend that power to him.

Overhauling math, training teachers, and tutoring students

The budget proposal includes $4 million to train teachers in evidence-based math instruction and support districts that perform poorly in math — both part of Hochul’s initiative to get “back to basics” in math instruction — and $9 million to support individualized tutoring in high-need schools.

In an effort to recruit and retain teachers, Hochul also proposed $2 million for an accelerated teacher preparation program and $2 million for high school students interested in entering the teaching profession to earn college credit in relevant subjects.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Abigail Kramer is a reporter in New York City. Contact Abigail atakramer@chalkbeat.org.

Board of Regents’ wish list: $1.1 billion hike for homeless students, early college, and arts

2025-12-15T23:49:32+00:00

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Expanding funding for early college programs, increasing support for students experiencing homelessness and learning English as a new language, and giving more money for summer arts programs were a few of the priorities that the New York’s Board of Regents presented on Monday.

For its annual budget proposal, the Regents asked for an additional $1.1 billion next fiscal year, hoping their recommendations inform Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers as they are set to begin the new legislative season.

Notably, the board asked to increase money for the Foundation Aid formula, which comprises the largest component of school funding for the state. The formula sends money to districts based on student needs, and board members are calling for increases in the amount districts would get for serving students experiencing homelessness as well as those learning English as a new language.

With no adjustments, Foundation Aid would get a $713.5 million increase in funding under the current law, totalling $27.1 billion. However, the board would like an additional $283.3 million increase in the formula, saying that its priorities reflected the population of students with the highest need. New York City had a record high number of homeless students last school year, with roughly 154,000 children living in shelters or doubled up with family or friends. An estimated 19% of students, or about 152,500, were learning English as a new language.

The state last year tweaked the two-decade-old Foundation Aid formula to update various metrics, and while New York City got more Foundation Aid overall, schools in the five boroughs would have gotten an additional $300 million had the changes not been made.

Board members also would like $10.9 million to expand the College in High School Opportunity Funds in response to growing interest in early college programs in which high school students take college courses and graduate with an associate degree.

The Regents also are pushing for $5 million for P-Teach to address the teacher shortage by helping students work toward teaching careers. The program is modeled on P-Tech, which supports high school students in working toward an associate degree and trains them for careers in STEM.

A significant portion of the budget, $20 million, is proposed to go towards pre-K expansion. The grant would not be competitive, but calculated based on student need. The goal is to reach 85% of kindergarten enrollment in pre-K seats throughout 35 districts statewide, said Sean Giambattista, the director of state aid at the New York State Education Department. New York City already has a universal pre-K program.

In response to federal actions that are putting schools and cultural institutions at risk, the Regents also shared proposals in their budget that protect equity and inclusion. The recommendations included a $800,000 increase for the Summer School for the Arts program, a statewide initiative that provides intensive pre-professional training for high schoolers at college campuses.

Regent Francis G. Wills said school leaders are facing new challenges and Regent Shino Tanikawa added that the proposal reflected the board’s collective values.

“If people say [a] budget is a moral document, I think that’s what we have here,” Tanikawa said.

Jessica Shuran Yu is a New York City-based journalist. You can reach her at jshuranyu@chalkbeat.org.

NYC paraprofessionals are fighting for a $10,000 raise. City Council is listening.

2025-11-12T23:56:53+00:00

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The fight for better pay for New York City’s paraprofessionals, the classroom aides who work alongside students with disabilities, will take a key step on Thursday that could make raises a reality before the end of the year.

Legislation supported by the New York City teachers union that would give paraprofessionals an immediate $10,000 annual raise is set to get a hearing in the Civil Service and Labor committee Thursday. The committee will then call a separate vote on the bill. If it passes, the bill will proceed to a vote from the full City Council.

Introduced by Manhattan council member Keith Powers, the bill is co-sponsored by 47 of the council’s 51 members, making it likely to pass its next hurdles.

The raises would bring some immediate economic relief to thousands of paraprofessionals, whose starting annual salary of $32,000 forces many to work second and third jobs to stay afloat and makes it difficult to recruit new candidates, according to paraprofessionals and United Federation of Teachers officials. There were roughly 1,400 vacant paraprofessional positions last year, according to Education Department figures, leaving students with disabilities unable to access critical services and support.

Raises would also add a major new line item to the city’s education budget — costing an estimated $260 million a year, lawmakers said in January.

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who ran a campaign centered on affordability and won the endorsement of the teachers union in the general election, has expressed his support for the legislation.

“When it comes to paraprofessionals, we have so many vacant positions because these positions simply do not pay enough,” he said at a mayoral debate in June. “I support legislation in the council … which would create a recurring annual bonus so we can actually fill those positions.”

The bill was originally scheduled for a hearing next month, making it unlikely to pass before the end of the calendar year and forcing the process to start over, union officials said. But the hearing was recently moved up. “We’ve got to get these paraprofessionals paid, so we are trying to act with urgency here,” said Powers.

Using legislation to circumvent collective bargaining

The effort is notable for using the legislative process to achieve a raise for city employees, rather than the collective bargaining municipal unions conduct with the city government when contracts are renewed. A spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams said in January that any pay raises should be worked out through collective bargaining and noted that paraprofessionals received a contract in 2023 that runs until 2027.

Another Adams spokesperson said officials will share their views on the bill during Thursday’s hearing and didn’t immediately say whether Adams would veto it. Adams, who leaves office Jan. 1, recently vetoed several pieces of legislation passed by the council.

Powers said he’s confident that the bill has enough support to override a mayoral veto if one comes.

Teachers union President Michael Mulgrew and other union leaders have been sounding the alarm over the past year about a paraprofessional shortage.

Some union members critical of Mulgrew — including paraprofessionals — believe the legislation was an effort to shore up support in a closely contested union election earlier this year. Union leaders should have won the raises through collective bargaining, those critics say.

“I’m not against paraprofessionals getting more money, it’s just the method,” said Marie Wausnock, a Staten Island paraprofessional who cofounded a union caucus slate called Fix Para Pay that is largely opposed to Mulgrew’s Unity caucus.

“I find it incredible a union president is taking this ask outside of collective bargaining, which is against every rule in the unionist book,” Wausnock said.

She said the pay bump would make an immediate economic difference for her and many other paraprofessionals. But she noted it won’t count toward pensions, and she worries that city lawmakers will change their mind about supporting such a large annual expense.

“It’s not a fix,” she said.

Teachers union officials say this approach was necessary because the “pattern bargaining” system that ensures municipal employees with different job titles get the same annual percent raises meant that wages for paras continued to fall further behind those of higher-paid employees like principals.

From 2005 to 2025, the starting salary for paraprofessionals increased by about $12,000, while wages for top principals rose by $86,000, according to a union analysis.

Melissa Arnold Lyon, a professor at the University at Albany studying education and labor politics, said the move fits into a larger pattern of education labor unions across the country using legislatures to win raises.

She added that public sector unions in New York might feel additional pressure to look outside of the collective bargaining process because of the state’s Taylor Law, which prohibits strikes by public sector unions, limiting their leverage in bargaining.

“It is quite difficult to reframe the base salary in New York state in particular, because of that tradition and the legal structure,” she said.

A difficult job becomes even harder

Tonia Calvo, a veteran paraprofessional who has worked in city schools for nearly two decades, said the job, while always challenging, has felt increasingly unsustainable in the wake of the pandemic, as student needs intensified and the cost of living soared.

“One woman that I work with was … trying to avoid being evicted, one was talking about paying off her car just so that she can come to work,” she said. She often meets paraprofessionals who have taken on second jobs at places like Target and ShopRite “because their salary is not enough to afford to live in this city.”

Calvo worries it’s becoming increasingly difficult to recruit new candidates unless they have other financial support.

The annual pay bump would start at around $10,800 for 2025, and would rise to $12,000 by 2030, according to the union. For Calvo, the money would go toward helping pay off her children’s student loans.

For many of her colleagues, it would allow them to stop working nights, to add a couple of “goodies” to their grocery shopping, and attend training sessions to get better at their work, she said.

“I think they’re scared to hope for more,” she said, “because they’re so used to getting less.”

Correction: Nov. 12, 2025: A previous version of this story said the council will vote on the bill during Thursday’s hearing. The vote has not yet been scheduled.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

Mamdani’s $6 billion universal child care plan: How will NYC fund, staff, and scale up the program?

2025-11-11T21:29:13+00:00

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Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has been clear on how he wants New Yorkers to evaluate his tenure: by whether he can achieve his ambitious campaign promises, including free child care starting at 6 weeks old.

“Being right in and of itself is meaningless,” Mamdani told The New York Times. “We have to deliver.”

Much of the discussion around whether Mamdani can follow through has focused on how he’ll pay for the eye-popping estimated $6 billion annual price tag for universal child care.

But paying for the program is only the first step.

If he gets the funding, Mamdani will face an array of logistical and operational challenges in standing up new public infrastructure for hundreds of thousands of youngsters, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former officials, policy experts, advocates, and educators.

Though Mamdani seems to be looking toward the rollout of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s ambitious pre-K and 3-K programs as a road map, the expansion into child care for infants and toddlers 2 and under brings a new set of challenges. The youngest New Yorkers require different space and supervision considerations than 3- and 4-year-olds, increasing the urgency of growing a staffing pipeline and identifying new spaces. Moreover, many observers say there are big flaws in the current child care system that could undercut expansion efforts if they’re not addressed.

“Is child care for all possible? It’s absolutely possible. Anything’s possible with the resources and the will,” said Richard Buery, the CEO of Robin Hood, and a former deputy mayor under de Blasio who oversaw the rollout of universal prekindergarten. “But I would not understate … the operational complexity of doing so.”

Here’s what experts told Chalkbeat about where the child care system stands now and what it will take to make it free for all.

How is the city going to pay for it?

Cost isn’t the only obstacle to Mamdani’s universal child care pledge — but it is the biggest.

The $6 billion estimate covers both the cost of creating new seats and bringing the salaries of child care workers, whose median income is currently $25,000, on par with those of city public school teachers, whose median yearly pay is close to $100,000.

The city’s 3-K and pre-K systems, by comparison, cost a total of about $1.6 billion, according to the most recent figures from the city’s Independent Budget Office.

Mamdani plans to fund the program through a tax hike on millionaires and corporations, a proposal that would need approval from the state legislature and Gov. Kathy Hochul. He estimates the taxes would raise about $9 billion a year.

Hochul has already shut down the idea of a tax hike, but has opened the door to increasing state funding for child care, which she shares as a top priority.

“I can’t just write a check and cover this cost, but I’ve talked to Zohran Mamdani … and we will get on a path forward,” she said last month at a child care summit convened by the 5Boro Institute at Citizens Union, a think tank.

De Blasio faced a similar dilemma, albeit over a much smaller price tag, when he tried to convince former Gov. Andrew Cuomo to greenlight a tax hike on wealthy residents to fund universal pre-K (Cuomo rejected the tax, but found other money in the state budget.)

Meanwhile, some advocates and experts are pushing a phased-in approach with a less daunting initial price tag. The group New Yorkers United for Childcare suggests starting out with universal care for 2-year-olds — a proposal City Comptroller Brad Lander estimates would cost $1.6 billion a year.

And while there’s no way around the high costs, proponents point out that child care also brings substantial economic benefits by freeing up more parents to work.

How close are we to free universal child care now?

There were about 466,000 kids ages 4 and under living in New York City as of 2022, according to the state health department.

City officials say both pre-K for 4-year-olds and 3-K for 3-year-olds are universal, in that everyone who applied this year got an offer. But 15% of 3-K applicants and 7% of pre-K applicants got an offer to a program they didn’t list on their application.

Of the city’s roughly 195,000 3- and 4-year-olds, about 101,000 of them were in free 3-K and pre-K programs last year.

Some observers say there’s still unmet demand for 3-K. Lander estimated 3-K has to grow by 16,000 seats to become truly universal.

Moreover, the vast majority of city-funded pre-K and 3-K programs run only six hours and 20 minutes a day from September to June, leaving tens of thousands of families paying out of pocket for afternoon and summer coverage.

Making afternoon and summer coverage free for all pre-K and 3-K families would cost around $872 million, Lander estimates. But the City Council is proposing a less costly intermediate step: moving to a “family share” model that charges families on a uniform sliding scale based on income for extended hours.

About 17,000 3- and 4-year-olds got state-funded child care vouchers for low-income families worth $300 a week, according to the Administration for Children’s Services, which runs the voucher program. (There are currently about 10,000 city kids on the waitlist for vouchers because of insufficient funding, officials said.)

For kids 2 and under, free child care is much more limited — and reserved for low-income families.

In 2024, only 32,000 infants and toddlers got free care through city-run programs or state vouchers — just a quarter of the roughly 108,000 kids who qualify based on family income, according to Lander’s analysis. And that’s not to mention the more than 150,000 tots who don’t qualify for a means-tested program and currently have almost no free options.

Who’s going to staff it?

The staffing needs to create a universal program for infants and toddlers are likely to be immense, experts said.

Younger kids require more teachers — one for every three infants, and one for every five to six toddlers, according to licensing regulations, compared to one for every 10 3 and 4-year-olds.

Babies and toddlers are also more likely to be in small, home-based child care settings, meaning any expansion will likely lean heavily on those providers.

It’s a workforce that has been decimated by years of low pay, the loss of students and staff to universal pre-K and 3-K programs, and the COVID pandemic. President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign has further strained the immigrant-heavy workforce, according to providers and advocates.

The chapter of the United Federation of Teachers representing home-based child care providers has shrunk from 28,000 in 2007 to just 12,000 today, said Tammie Miller, the chapter chair.

“People love what they do … but they cannot make a living,” said Doris Irizarry, a long-time home-based child care educator and cofounder of the advocacy group ECE On the Move.

Many observers said a logical first step for Mamdani is expanding the existing 3-K and pre-K model to include 2-year-olds. The city recently launched a pilot to open 240 seats to kids 2 and under, regardless of their parents’ income, through providers already contracting with the city.

For infants, who are more likely to still be at home with parents or in some kind of informal care, the equation may look different. Mamdani has said he plans to subsidize care “at home for families who prefer to have a trusted neighbor or relative take care of their child.”

Expanding paid family leave is “both the most economically efficient way to provide care for young children and good for families,” said Emmy Liss, a former Education Department official who helped oversee universal pre-K and studies models of free child care nationwide.

But some experts warned it’s no replacement for investing in the workforce.

“Expanding paid family leave is clearly an important benefit for families,” said Lara Kyriakou, the policy director at All Our Kin, an organization that supports home-based child care educators. “And it’s not a substitute for a trained, informed workforce.”

Where are the programs going to be?

The city relied on space in K-12 public school buildings for a substantial share of 3-K and pre-K programs. Several experts said it will likely be harder to outfit public schools for infants and toddlers — though models do exist.

Mamdani has promised to open more child care centers, using city space and public school buildings wherever possible. He also pledged to subsidize commercial rent and ease the regulatory burdens of opening new programs.

One regulation some providers and experts say makes it harder to build new child care sites: The city’s Health Department requires programs serving kids under 2-years-old to occupy the ground floor.

“Is this really a barrier we need to keep in place?” Hochul asked at the recent child care summit. “If we don’t add more capacity … then we’re failing.”

Who’s going to oversee it?

The city’s child care sector is currently controlled by an alphabet soup of governmental agencies.

The Education Department handles the contracts and supervision for 3-K and pre-K programs. The Health Department is in charge of licensing. The Fire and Buildings Departments deal with building inspections. And the Administration for Children’s Services operates the state-funded voucher system for tens of thousands of low-income families.

Most observers said the Education Department should continue to play the leading role in an expanded child care system — but urged officials to simplify the complex governance structure. Buery, the former deputy mayor, said he doesn’t see how Mamdani could pull off the operational challenges without maintaining mayoral control of the school system, an arrangement Mamdani said he wants to change.

A universal system will also likely have to balance two distinct funding models, at least for now: vouchers that hand cash to parents to spend on child care, and contracts that fund providers.

Some officials hope to eventually simplify that process, too.

“We need to, as we go on with it, figure out a way to phase out that type of system,” said City Council speaker Adrienne Adams, a Queens democrat who has clashed with Mayor Eric Adams over child care in recent years. “I believe that we can evolve away from the voucher system.”

What needs to be fixed in the current system?

Providers, advocates, and experts warn that if the city doesn’t act to shore up the foundations of the current system, any expansion efforts will cause it to buckle.

Experts and providers both agreed the city should improve its process for reimbursing providers, which has resulted in delays so substantial that some providers have had to close.

Another major issue: The city’s free child care programs had more than 27,000 unfilled seats last year, according to city data. Programs reserved for low-income families were more likely to go vacant, reflecting the onerous process of qualifying, experts and advocates said.

The glut of unfilled seats is partly due to demographic projections for pre-K that failed to fully take into account how the city’s declining birth rates and COVID enrollment losses would play out on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood level, said Dan Weisberg, the former first deputy chancellor at the city Education Department under Adams.

Some advocates and experts said the city can help fill programs by allowing providers to shift the kind of seats they’re offering — from 3-K seats to 2-year-old seats, for example, or from school day to extended day — to meet the demand in their communities. Some of those changes might happen only through new contracts. (The Education Department is planning to issue a 2-year extension when the current child care contracts expire next year, people familiar with the plans said.)

Weisberg encouraged the new administration to take a more conservative approach in building out capacity because it’s much easier to add seats than take them away, he said.

Correction: Nov. 11, 2025: A previous version of this story described a pilot program as being open to 2-year-olds. It’s open to kids 2 and under.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

NYC is piloting free child care for kids ages 2 and under. These neighborhoods get priority.

2025-10-27T16:55:37+00:00

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For the first time, New York City is preparing to open hundreds of free, publicly funded child care seats for kids ages 2 and under, regardless of their parents’ income.

The roughly 240 seats are set to open in January and are part of a $10 million pilot funded in the city’s budget agreement from June. City Council leaders who pushed for the program said they hope it will offer a blueprint for future efforts to expand free child care to a wider swath of the youngest New Yorkers.

“This latest critical investment in child care gives the City the tools necessary to build a system to provide care for families with children from birth to five years old,” said Rendy Desamours, a spokesperson for Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, a Queens Democrat.

The city already funds preschool seats for nearly 100,000 3- and 4-year-olds, and the push to expand that system has gathered steam in recent months. Mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani has pledged to provide free universal child care starting when children are six weeks old, and Gov. Kathy Hochul has said expanding child care is a top priority.

The new seats, unlike the majority of those in the city’s 3-K and Pre-K programs, will be subsidized for up to 10 hours a day year round, rather than following the K-12 school schedule, which runs six hours and 20 minutes a day, from September through June.

A City Council spokesperson said the seats will open in January, but officials didn’t immediately clarify when families could start applying or when enrollment would begin. Applications for Pre-K and 3-K programs starting September 2026 open in January.

Contracts between the city and providers who will be offering the new seats have yet to be finalized, but officials have now narrowed how they will award them, according to information provided by the City Council.

City officials will prioritize high-needs neighborhoods including Hunts Point and Mott Haven in the Bronx, Sunset Park in Brooklyn, and Jamaica, Queens for the new seats. (See the full list of priority neighborhoods below.)

Officials selected those neighborhoods based on their poverty rates, estimates of how many eligible children aren’t in child care, and the number of families who fall just above the income threshold to qualify for city programs geared towards low-income families.

Education Department spokesperson Dominique Ellison said the pilot will “expand access to care for infants and toddlers in communities with the greatest need.” But officials stressed they are still working out the final number and location of the new seats.

Some of the $10 million will also go towards outreach to ensure families know about the new seats.

Before the new pilot program, publicly funded free child care seats for kids 2 and under were available only to families who make below 85% of the state median income. That comes out to about $91,000 a year for a family of three and $109,000 for a family of four.

The city Education Department has struggled to fill all of those seats, with 6,250 infants and toddlers enrolled last year and more than 4,100 seats unfilled, according to city data. Advocates and experts say the application process for the income-based programs can be onerous for families.

A separate state-run voucher program, using the same income threshold, gives families an average of $300 a week to defray child care costs, and has exploded in popularity.

But as the costs of child care have continued to rise, it has become a crippling expense even for families with higher incomes — helping drive an exodus of families with young children from the five boroughs.

For the new seats, city officials will tap child care centers and home-based programs that already have contracts for other programs.

Families will apply for the new seats through the same MySchools portal used for Pre-K, 3-K, and income-based programs, a council spokesperson said.

Here’s the full list of priority ZIP codes, with their borough and neighborhood names, along with alternates:

Highest Priority Neighborhoods (with ZIP codes)

Bronx

Hunts Point and Mott Haven, 10459

Hugh Bridge and Morrisania, 10452

Northeast Bronx, 10466

Central Bronx, 10460

Brooklyn

Sunset Park, 11220

Southern Brooklyn, 11224

Borough Park, 11219

Bushwick and Williamsburg, 11206

Manhattan

Central Harlem, 10027

Queens

Jamaica, 11432

Staten Island

Port Richmond, 10304

Alternates:

Bronx

Bronx Park and Fordham, 10467

Brooklyn

Borough Park, 11204

Borough Park, 11230

Southern Brooklyn, 11223

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Thousands of new NYC teachers set to begin amid class size hiring push

2025-08-26T23:03:44+00:00

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Thousands of new teachers filed into Brooklyn’s Barclays Center for orientation Tuesday as part of what New York City officials hope will be a historically large hiring class.

In a typical year, the nation’s largest school district faces the daunting challenge of hiring between 4,000 and 5,000 new educators to replace the ones who left. This year, officials aim to hire 3,700 on top of that to satisfy the state’s class size reduction law. Some 750 schools received additional money from the city for the coming year to hire extra teachers to bring more classes under the state caps, which range from 20 to 25 students depending on age.

City officials weren’t immediately able to provide preliminary hiring numbers Tuesday, but Patrick Fagan, the Education Department’s Chief Talent Officer, said between 3,500 and 4,000 teachers were in attendance Tuesday. Teacher recruitment usually continues through September. United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew, a key backer of the class size law, said he’s optimistic that when school starts next Thursday, the city will be in good shape to reach its legal obligation of keeping 60% of classes under the designated caps.

“We clearly have a challenge, but you can see today we’re at the Barclays Center, and it’s packed,” he said. Mulgrew said the union and the Education Department have been reaching out to local colleges and education schools.

The last time Mulgrew remembers such an intense hiring push was when the city needed a glut of new early childhood educators at the start of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Universal Pre-K initiative about a decade ago, he said.

The class size law wasn’t the only big state policy that loomed large at Tuesday’s welcome event. A new statewide school cellphone ban, which prohibits students from using personal electronic devices during the school day, takes effect this school year. Hundreds of city schools already had a ban in place, but hundreds more will be adopting one for the first time.

“This will literally be your first classroom management challenge,” Mulgrew told the new teachers in his remarks. “Your first day, all of you will hear from your students: ‘Why can’t I have my cellphone?’”

Schools are supposed to have plans in place to help teachers deal with students unwilling to give up their phones, Mulgrew noted. And he said the payoff in terms of increased focus in class will be well worth any early bumps.

Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos, who took the helm last October, told the new teachers she was focused on keeping the system stable by continuing the reforms initiated by her predecessor, David Banks. (Aviles-Ramos may be replaced midway through this school year if Mayor Eric Adams loses November’s general election.)

In particular, she touted the city’s efforts to overhaul literacy and math curriculum, which are set to expand this year. Aviles-Ramos framed the effort to standardize curriculum as a time-saver that allows teachers to focus on delivering rather than crafting their lessons.

“You are not yet trained curriculum designers,” she said. “You are hired to teach, to assess, and to support your children … We are giving you blueprints to do just that.”

This year, the Education Department doubled the size of its cohort of New York City Teaching Fellows, an expedited pathway into the profession that allows new teachers to earn their certification while in the classroom and has historically attracted a more diverse pool of candidates. But severe payment delays meant some fellows didn’t receive their stipends until this month, while others are still waiting.

The city has also been making strides in diversifying its pool of educators, though the teaching force still doesn’t mirror student demographics.

For some teachers, seeing all of their new colleagues gathered together Tuesday was an exciting reminder of the work ahead.

A first year teacher named Rafael, who declined to share his last name, was excited to start his career as a music technology teacher at an elementary school in the South Bronx — the neighborhood where he grew up.

“It’s really fun to give back to the neighborhood that gives so much to music,” he said. “This is probably the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time, getting a job I’m really going to love.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

NYC schools to get $29 million for cellphone ban. But when will funds arrive?

2025-07-16T21:11:00+00:00

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With just six weeks to go before all New York schools must comply with a “bell-to-bell” ban on cellphones, officials said they are putting $29 million behind the effort for New York City’s public schools.

But the funding — $25 million from the city and $4 million from the state — has not yet been distributed to schools, and officials did not say when it would become available.

Many school leaders have been planning to implement cellphone bans for months, and more than half of the city’s schools already restrict cellphone use, Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos said Wednesday at a Bronx press conference with the governor. On many campuses, students use lockable pouches or store their phones in bins or lockers before they head to class.

But other principals may still be devising their policies, decisions that could be complicated by the uncertainty about the availability of funding.

A city Education Department spokesperson did not respond to questions about when funding would be distributed. Officials said some schools that recently purchased storage devices could be eligible for reimbursement.

The $29 million earmarked for New York City represents roughly $35 per student in grades K-12, which is about the cost of Yondr pouches, cloth devices with metal locks that students keep with them during the day. The state’s contribution, which is designated for secondary students only, will be made available to districts on Aug. 29.

During a joint appearance with Aviles-Ramos on Wednesday, Gov. Kathy Hochul stressed that the policy is meant to reduce distractions, boost learning, and improve students’ mental health.

It may be a difficult transition for students, she acknowledged. “We have to prepare the parents for really what will be a detoxing period for them,” Hochul said.

In New York City, Aviles-Ramos said principals must be ready to restrict phones on the first day of school and will not be granted leeway to slowly phase in the new policy.

“If we slowly trickle it into the school year, what ends up happening is we miss the moment,” Aviles-Ramos said. “Habits are built from day one and so we are going to be ready on day one.”

New York City officials have already updated the Education Department’s guidance, which had been on the books for nearly a decade, after former Mayor Bill de Blasio lifted the school system’s cellphone ban over equity concerns. (He worried that students at schools with metal detectors were hit harder by the ban, forcing many kids at low-income schools to pay $1 a day or more to store their phones at bodegas.)

The new guidelines call on schools to come up with a plan to store all internet-enabled devices — cellphones, smartwatches, laptops, tablets, MP3 players, and game consoles — that students bring to school. Possible methods include: school storage lockers, students’ assigned lockers, or Yondr pouches. Schools are also on the hook for providing a way for students to access their stored devices during school hours “when necessary.”

“The law is very flexible, and it does not state that we must collect, and so there are a number of methods that schools can use,” Aviles Ramos said.

Officials outlined a host of exceptions, such as for specific education purposes, to monitor medical conditions, or for student caregivers. Devices might still be used for translation services, for student emergencies, or for reasons related to a student’s special education plan. (And students can have access to their devices if they go off campus for lunch, which adds another logistical complication for schools.)

Schools must also provide families with their direct phone number or any other ways they can contact their children in an emergency during the school day. Schools must clearly explain how students will be disciplined for cellphone ban violations as well policies for confiscating devices when students violate the rules. Students may not be suspended solely because they violated their school’s cellphone ban and accessed a device during the school day, the city’s guidance states.

The city also requires schools to consult their school leadership teams, which include principals,teachers, and parents, on developing their cellphone policies. These teams, however, don’t typically meet during the summer.

The rules are expected to be voted on by the Panel for Educational Policy on July 23.

This story has been updated with an additional response from the city Education Department.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex atazimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy atazimmer@chalkbeat.org.

See how many new teachers your NYC school is getting to reduce class sizes

2025-05-21T19:28:15+00:00

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New York City released a detailed list Tuesday of which public schools are getting money to hire additional teachers to help reduce class sizes next year — and how many they can hire.

In order to give school communities a better sense of what the new hiring push will look like on their campuses, Chalkbeat created a searchable table showing how many new teachers were assigned to each of the 741 schools awarded new teacher funding.

The number of new teachers assigned to schools ranged from a high of 31 at M.S. 158, Marie Curie middle school, in Bayside Queens, to just one additional teacher at more than 60 schools, including the East Village Community School in Manhattan and the Brooklyn Brownstone school.

If a school’s name does not appear in the table, that means that the school either did not apply for the class size reduction funding, or its plan was not approved.

The detailed list comes more than a month after city officials first announced plans to hire some 3,700 new teachers by next fall to help the city comply with the state’s 2022 class size law.

Under the law, 60% of classrooms citywide must meet the caps — which limit classes to between 20 and 25 students depending on the grade level — by next September. As of earlier this school year, roughly 46% of classes were at or below the caps.

To meet next year’s deadline, city officials gave schools the option to apply for additional funding for next year to help lower class sizes. Some 800 schools applied, and about 750 of those plans were approved by a review committee of officials from the Education Department and the teachers and principals unions.

The lion’s share of the new resources will go toward hiring roughly 3,700 additional teachers. Officials said they also allocated some funds to hire new administrators to oversee those extra teachers and to help schools make small space adjustments.

The new teacher hires will come on top of the 4,000-5,000 teachers that the city has to hire in a normal year to replace educators who leave — creating a massive new hiring opportunity and challenge for schools.

That elevated hiring will likely continue for years as new class size deadlines get phased in.

“Accounting for new hires due to class size compliance and our standard annual new hires, [New York City Public Schools] needs to hire over 20,000 teachers between now and September 2028,” officials wrote in a draft class size reduction plan released Tuesday.

Officials recently shared that they expect the new reduction plans to cost more than $400 million. Mayor Eric Adams committed $150 million of that in his executive budget earlier this month, and roughly $241 million will come from increased state aid, city Education Department officials said. City officials are still searching for funding to cover the remaining gap.

The new teacher funding went disproportionately to schools with a lower student poverty rate — likely a reflection of the fact that those schools are more likely to have more classrooms over the caps and therefore need more teachers to lower class sizes.

“We did see more applications for more teachers from schools in our comparatively better-off communities,” Emma Vadehra, the Education Department’s deputy chancellor for operations and finance, told the City Council at a budget hearing on Wednesday. The new teachers “are tending to go more to Queens, south Brooklyn, Staten Island, where schools are farther from compliance, than to some of those higher-need communities.”

Schools in the lowest 25% of student poverty rates citywide are getting 42% of the new teachers, while schools in the highest quartile for student poverty are getting 15% of the new teachers, a Chalkbeat analysis found. (Schools in the lowest student poverty quartile enroll about double the number of students as those in the highest-poverty quartile, so per capita, the difference in new teacher funding is less extreme).

About 58% of schools in the lowest-poverty quartile got some amount of new teacher funding, compared to 34% of schools in the highest-poverty quartile.

Schools in Queens are getting 1,289 of the new teachers, more than the Bronx and Manhattan combined, a Chalkbeat analysis found.

The number of teachers a school is funded for isn’t a guarantee that they’ll hire that many teachers.

Officials said the hiring spree is underway, with fairs happening across many districts. Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos said the Education Department is working with district superintendents to develop plans to market their neighborhoods and schools to prospective teachers. The city is also offering monetary bonuses for teachers who commit early in areas of the city that have historically been harder to staff, she said.

To see how many new teachers your school was assigned, you can search the school’s name in the table below.

Data analysis and table by Thomas Wilburn.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

NYC preschool offers yield waitlists in some neighborhoods, empty seats in others

2025-05-20T22:06:52+00:00

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Over the past week, families of preschoolers got offers to New York City’s sprawling free early childhood education system — and acceptance rate data shared Tuesday by city officials contains a familiar paradox.

Even as the city faces a historic child care affordability crisis, tens of thousands of free seats will likely go vacant once again next school year. Roughly 56,000 students turning 4 by the end of 2025 got offers last week to the city’s pre-K program, which has capacity for roughly 70,000, according to data shared Tuesday by Education Department officials with the City Council. Another 44,000 students turning 3 this year got offers Tuesday for 3-K, which has room for 47,000.

Across the roughly 130,000 total early childhood education seats overseen by the city’s Education Department, only about 70% are currently filled, according to Simone Hawkins, the deputy chancellor for Early Childhood Education.

Officials, advocates and lawmakers point to a number of potential reasons, including a lack of outreach, a drop in the population of young kids, and a mismatch between the location of seats and demand.

“We have to really face the reality that this sector is very much stressed and strained for a variety of reasons,” said Hawkins, who took over as deputy chancellor last July after her predecessor’s rocky two-and-a-half-year tenure. “I do think that outreach is part of the solution. It’s not the whole solution. It’s a matter of really moving seats closer to where the demand lives.”

Despite all those empty seats, thousands of families didn’t get into any of their preferred programs, officials said. Roughly 15% of 3-K applicants, more than 6,000 students, didn’t get into any of the programs they listed on their application and were instead assigned other options by the city — leaving some facing long commutes.

Rebecca Bailin, the executive director of New Yorkers United for Childcare, said her organization has already heard from multiple families concerned that their 3-K offer is too far away or has hours that don’t work.

One family living near the border of Bushwick and Ridgewood was placed in a program roughly 40 minutes away and not easily accessible by train, according to survey results shared with Chalkbeat.

“I can’t get there every morning with a 3 year old, it’s just not feasible,” wrote the parent, who said they would likely have to continue paying for a private program.

City officials noted that this year, unlike last, every family at least got an offer. Some families might get into programs off waitlists over the summer, officials added. And while families can apply for up to 12 programs, about half of the families applying to preschool rank only one or two programs, according to a report commissioned several years ago by the Education Department.

Zachary Nosanchuk, a spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams, said the mayor’s recent commitment to long-term funding for 3-K is allowing the city for the first time to offer “a seat in 3-K for every child and family who wants one.” City officials will “continue to work with families to ensure every child can attend a program that meets their needs,” he added.

Officials have for years pointed to a misalignment between where seats are located and where there’s demand but have yet to make a major dent in fixing the problem. The rate of filled 3-K seats varies widely across the city — from a low of 61% in District 23 in central Brooklyn to a high of 98% in District 30 in western Queens, according to a recent report from the Independent Budget Office.

Hawkins said the department is constrained by the contracts that govern the city’s relationship with scores of community-based organizations who operate the lion’s share of the 3-K and pre-K programs. She said the city is doing its best to work within those contracts to shift seats to better align with demand, including converting pre-K seats into 3-K seats and shifting seats currently earmarked as full-year seats only for low-income families to school year seats for any family.

In addition, city officials are seeking to shift more of their federally-funded Head Start seats to 0- to 2-year-olds because of growing demand for that age range, they said.

Factors including the cost of housing and the COVID-19 pandemic have also contributed to a shrinking number of young kids in the five boroughs. The population of kids under 5 in New York City shrank by 18% between 2020 and 2023.

But many advocates and lawmakers say the city still has a long way to go in making families who are here aware of the program and how to apply.

“We’ve talked to parents … who didn’t even know about 3-K,” said Bailin. And even though Adams committed to long-term funding to sustain 3-K in this year’s budget, Bailin argued that years of budget uncertainty has hampered the city’s ability to effectively administer the program.

Adams agreed to add $5 million to the fiscal year 2025 budget specifically for outreach, and included the funding again for this year, but not beyond that. It’s one of several education items council members are fighting to get long-term funding for.

Hawkins agreed with suggestions from several council members that the Education Department should embark on a more wholesale reimagining of the early childhood education system.

“It’s not just about opening new seats … it’s not just about the age of seats, but the type of seats and the people who are supporting these children through their learning trajectory,” she said.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

New state formula means $314 million less for NYC schools, but city still gets Foundation Aid hike

2025-05-08T22:08:23+00:00

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Under changes to a state funding formula pushed by Gov. Kathy Hochul, New York City’s public schools have been bracing to receive hundreds of millions less than they would have received otherwise.

Those tweaks passed the state Senate and Assembly on Thursday as part of the broader state budget, which is more than a month late.

The city’s public schools are expected to receive about $314 million less than they would have under the current formula, known as Foundation Aid, according to figures provided by the office of State. Sen John Liu, the chairman of the state senate’s New York City Education Committee.

The city will still see an overall increase in Foundation Aid next year of $539 million, bringing the total to $10.46 billion, according to state budget documents. A Hochul spokesperson emphasized that total state funding for public schools across New York is poised to hit $37.6 billion, a $1.7 billion increase.

Nearly all observers and policymakers agree that the state’s two-decade-old Foundation Aid formula, which accounts for the majority of state funding for public schools, needed an overhaul. A report from the Rockefeller Institute of Government commissioned by the state and released last year also called for significant changes. But Hochul’s tweaks have disappointed many advocates.

The governor’s proposal focused on updating a metric for student poverty, replacing a measure that relied on the 2000 Census.

Several advocacy groups wanted a bigger overhaul, including additional weighting for students who live in temporary housing, are in foster care, or have a disability. They were upset that Hochul’s changes didn’t incorporate a better accounting of regional differences in cost of living. The current federal poverty threshold for a family of four is roughly $32,150 a year, but that income means something different for a family in New York City than in other parts of the state.

“The federal guidelines make no adjustments for the local cost of living; they are the same in the five boroughs as in a rural community upstate, a Midwestern suburb, or a small town in the Sunbelt,” wrote Kim Sweet, the executive director of Advocates for Children, a group that works with low-income families. “While an overhaul of the outdated formula is sorely needed, the limited changes make matters worse.”

The only region that will see updated regional cost adjustment is Westchester County, budget documents show. A Hochul spokesperson did not answer questions about why the governor’s plan funnels less money to New York City, a district where three-quarters of children live in poverty.

State officials are also planning a small increase in funding for English Language Learners, which will result in about $30 million more for New York City, according to an estimate from Advocates for Children. Roughly 16% of city public school students, or 148,000 children, are learning English.

Liu said that while he was concerned that city schools will receive less money than under the current formula, the nation’s largest school system will still see an increase of more than half a billion dollars. He also noted the budget includes a $35 million bump for city career and technical education programs.

Asked whether he found the changes to Foundation Aid acceptable, Liu said the budget process “landed where it landed.”

He blamed city officials for factoring in the anticipated tweaks to Foundation Aid in their own budget plan before the state budget was finalized, which he said made it harder to negotiate.

“You don’t raise the white flag” before the state budget passes, he added. “That was a careless move at best.”

A spokesperson for New York City’s Education Department did not respond to a request for comment.

As the state funding picture came clearer into focus, school funding advocates remained concerned that the shortfall from Albany would be compounded by the Trump administration’s moves to cut education funding.

“It just seems very bizarre to me in a context where we’re facing cuts from the federal government,” said Marina Marcou-O’Malley, the co-executive director at the Alliance for Quality Education, an advocacy group that has pushed to increase school funding.

“That’s going to have an impact in the classroom — an impact with students,” she said.

Arlen Benjamin-Gomez, the executive director of EdTrust-New York, which focuses on equity issues, also blasted the changes to the formula, calling them “a troubling step backward.”

“A formula once considered among the most progressive in the nation is now being dismantled by choices that undermine equity and shortchange the students who need the most support,” she said.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Eric Adams touts after-school, child care investments in executive budget proposal

2025-05-01T23:15:58+00:00

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Education and youth were front and center in Mayor Eric Adams’ executive budget proposal Thursday as he touted plans to boost spending on child care and after-school programs.

Overall, Adams’ $115.1 billion executive budget proposes roughly $18.3 billion in city funding for the Education Department’s operating budget. That’s a roughly $670 million increase over the city’s education spending this fiscal year and $4.7 billion more than the city allocated in 2019, according to budget documents — increases that have kept the city’s education budget growing as federal aid diminished.

Several of the big ticket items, including reversing plans to let early childhood education funding expire and expanding investment in after-school programs, were already publicized in the days and weeks leading up to Thursday’s executive budget. Officials also committed to supporting several other education programs initially funded by one-time federal aid, which was set to expire this year, and promised funding to boost teacher hiring to shrink class sizes.

“No one will feel the impact more than our students because this is the best budget ever for families and young people,” Adams said during his budget address at Bayside High School in Queens, his alma mater.

Leaders of the City Council, who will negotiate with Adams in the coming months to adopt a final budget, had called for roughly $800 million in new education spending, and said Thursday’s announcement was a good start but only came after sustained pushback from the council and advocates. The final budget is due by the end of June.

“This is how the budget process should work, but it’s disappointing that it took three years for this administration to become tired of being entirely on the wrong side of doing right by New Yorkers,” said Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, a Queens Democrat who is running against Adams for mayor, and Finance Committee Chair Justin Brannan, a Brooklyn Democrat, in a joint statement.

Other city officials questioned whether Adams’ executive budget adequately took into account threats to the city’s budget and economy at the state and federal level.

“Eric Adams’ Executive Budget is from a fantasyland where Trump’s tariffs aren’t increasing the likelihood of an economic downturn and federal budget cuts aren’t looming,” said Comptroller Brad Lander, who is also running for mayor.

Office of Management and Budget director Jacques Jiha countered that the city’s reserves are at record levels and the city’s revenue projections are appropriately conservative.

After-school and child care get big investments

Several of the biggest spending proposals in the executive budget are efforts to shore up child care programs at a time when the city’s increasing unaffordability for families continues to be a major issue in the mayoral race.

Adams previously announced that he would reverse plans to let $112 million for the city’s free preschool program for 3-year-olds — and another $55 million for special education preschool seats — expire at the end of this fiscal year. Adams also announced Thursday that he will continue funding a program providing child care vouchers to undocumented families at $25 million a year, though the City Council has asked for more.

Earlier this week, Adams unveiled a plan he said will set the city on a path to universal after-school care. The plan proposes adding 5,000 K-5 after-school seats by this fall and another 15,000 by fall 2027. Officials said they will conduct a needs assessment in 2027 to see how many additional seats are needed to reach universality and re-bid contracts to improve payment rates for after-school providers. All told, the expansion will cost roughly $331 million a year by 2027, according to budget documents.

Federal and state threats loom

Despite the increase in education spending, budget officials acknowledged some looming threats and uncertainties at both the state and federal level.

A final state budget still hasn’t been officially released a month after the due date, though Gov. Kathy Hochul sketched the outlines of the deal earlier this week. That deal will include a statewide “bell-to-bell” school cellphone ban — a mandate budget officials said would cost the city about $25 million and “have a negative impact on the City’s financial plan.” Officials said the figure was based on Education Department estimates for purchasing cellphone pouches and other implementation costs. But officials did not yet know how much financial support to expect from the state.

Other state threats include a likely change to the school funding formula that would deliver the city roughly $350 million less than the current formula and a gaping budget shortfall for a popular child care voucher program. The state budget deal is unlikely to provide the funding necessary to keep families from losing access to the vouchers, but Adams is continuing to lobby the state to fill the gap, the New York Daily News reported.

Adams told reporters Thursday that the program is still facing a $300 million budget gap.

“No one is talking about the shortchanging of New York City on the state level,” he said.

Budget officials also acknowledged that threats from the Trump administration to cut off federal funding for school districts offering certain diversity, equity, and inclusion programs — currently on hold because of legal challenges — jeopardizes $2 billion for city schools that could result in “staffing reductions, increased class sizes, and cuts to after-school and support programs.”

Some relief for programs propped up by federal COVID dollars

Some education programs previously funded by one-time federal COVID relief money and on the chopping block for next year were given a reprieve in Thursday’s budget.

Those include Project Pivot, a priority of former Chancellor David Banks that gives schools money to work with community-based organizations to prevent violence, which will get $15 million in this and future budgets, according to budget documents.

Other programs getting long-term funding commitments include arts education, computer science courses, and a tutoring program.

A program to provide additional support for students experiencing mental health crises will get $5 million for next year but no commitment beyond that, according to advocates.

Increased teacher hiring budget comes into focus

Thursday’s budget announcement also provided the first clues about how much the city will spend on its upcoming teacher hiring blitz to comply with the state’s class size law.

Adams previously announced that schools will get additional money to hire some 3,700 extra teachers on top of normal hiring for next school year, but officials have been tight-lipped about how much that will cost and where the money is coming from.

According to budget documents released Thursday, the city will commit $150 million for extra teacher hiring this year and $200 million annually in future years. Budget officials said state funding will be “reflected later” but didn’t clarify how much they expect and whether that will be in addition to or instead of the city’s contribution. Union officials said the state money will be in addition to the city funds, but that the precise amount is still unclear.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

NYC commits $167 million to shore up early childhood education system amid federal threats

2025-04-16T20:30:31+00:00

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After threatening to allow nearly $200 million in early childhood spending to expire, Mayor Eric Adams announced plans Wednesday to keep most of it in the budget for next year and beyond.

The move will restore $112 million for 3-K, the city’s free preschool program for 3-year-olds, and $55 million to help address a chronic shortage of seats for preschool children with disabilities.

Education Department officials also committed to temporarily using city money to sustain some federally funded Head Start programs amid the Trump administration’s efforts to slash the program.

In a press conference Wednesday alongside his predecessor Bill de Blasio, who launched the city’s free universal preschool program, Adams touted the restoration as a historic investment in the early childhood education system.

“This is a Herculean task that we are able to accomplish,” Adams said.

Adams, who faces an uphill battle for reelection this year, promised to make the funding a permanent part of the budget.

The announcement was welcome news for many early childhood education providers who have been deeply concerned about budget threats at both the state and federal level next year.

“Against the backdrop of simultaneous challenges facing early childhood education programs and providers in NYC, including significant funding shortfalls in the State’s child care assistance program and looming threats to Head Start funding at the Federal level, today’s announcement provides much-needed relief,” said Tara Gardner, the executive director of the Daycare Council, which represents dozens of childcare providers.

The move to restore the early childhood funding now instead of at the last minute after negotiations with City Council, as Adams did last year, could also ease political pressure on the mayor.

But leaders of the City Council, none of whom were present at Wednesday’s announcement, were not so quick to praise Adams, noting that he did not restore all of the expiring funding and that he could have avoided the cuts in the first place.

“Taking funding away from children’s programs that our families rely on and only putting some of it back doesn’t make you a champion; it only harms the early childhood education system,” said Council speaker Adrienne Adams, education chair Rita Joseph, and finance chair Justin Brannan in a joint statement.

Mayor Adams said he left the funding out of his preliminary budget in January because of “economic uncertainties.”

Speaker Adams, who is running for mayor, has also called on Mayor Adams to renew funding in his executive budget for a $25 million program that offers families seats with extended hours and $84 million to expand access to child care vouchers. That budget is expected by the end of the month.

A new chapter in yearslong battle to sustain 3-K funding

Wednesday’s announcement is the latest chapter in a battle over early childhood education that has been simmering since Adams took office in 2022, when the system was still reeling from pandemic-driven enrollment declines but flush with federal COVID aid.

De Blasio had used hundreds of millions of dollars of that aid to aggressively expand 3-K in an effort to make it universal, like he’d previously done for prekindergarten. But the Adams administration backed off that promise — swamped by more immediate problems including thousands of vacant seats in some neighborhoods and a severe payment delay crisis that forced some programs to shutter.

Adams officials at the time were not shy about laying the blame for those problems at the feet of the de Blasio administration, with former schools Chancellor David Banks saying “there have been a lot of messes to try to clean up.” Critics countered that many of the problems were self-inflicted and the result of poor leadership that led to a mass exodus in the Education Department’s early childhood division.

De Blasio and Adams put any animosity aside on Wednesday.

“One can have differences on applications, implementations, but we don’t differ on the foundation,” said Adams. “We are joined at the hip, and now we are building on what he started.”

As the federal COVID aid that funded the 3-K expansion expired, funding for early childhood education became a major point of contention with the City Council.

The commitment to make the 3-K and special education funding permanent could ease that battle and create more stability for providers, but challenges with the system remain.

Last year, 3-K enrollment was roughly 44,000, with more than 8,000 unfilled seats, according to city data. Pre-K enrollment was around 59,000 last year — down from a peak of over 70,000 before the pandemic — with 14,000 unfilled seats. Even with all those vacant seats, thousands of students didn’t initially get an offer to one of their preferred 3-K programs last year.

Adams said the city has more work to do in better aligning seats with demand, but said the process of closing seats in areas without high enough demand can be “painful … we have to be sensitive on how do we address that without traumatizing families and children.”

Council members fought last year to get an additional $5 million to improve the city’s outreach efforts to help fill vacant seats, but that money so far has not been restored for next year’s budget.

Students with disabilities face chronic shortage

The city’s promise of universal preschool has for years failed to reach students with disabilities, who have faced a chronic shortage of seats.

Adams vowed to address the problem by boosting funding to help community organizations make their wages more competitive and adding $55 million to open new seats.

Advocates praised the restoration of that $55 million, but it will likely still not be enough to guarantee a spot for every student who has a legal right to one.

About 651 preschool students with disabilities were waiting for placements this spring, Christina Foti, the city’s top special education official, said during a March City Council hearing.

Plus, advocates contend even more aggressive investments are needed to provide those students with a full range of services. More than 7,900 preschool students had not yet received at least one mandated service, such as speech or physical therapy. Nearly 4,600 of them — or 58% — had yet to receive any special education services listed on their learning plan, Foti said at the March hearing.

To address those gaps, advocates have called for $70 million more to beef up evaluations and services — funding that Adams has not yet committed.

Some Head Start providers get some relief, but fears loom large

Officials also promised Wednesday to use city money to help stabilize some Head Start providers facing deep uncertainty because of the Trump administration’s efforts to slash the program.

Head Start, which began in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty, funds early childhood programs for roughly 20,000 kids from low-income families across the city, according to federal data.

Providers who offer the program can either contract directly with the federal government, or subcontract from the city Education Department, which holds a Head Start grant for about 6,000 seats.

The program is facing several looming threats in the five boroughs. The grant held by the city Education Department ends in June, and the city was forced to re-compete for its contract because past concerns about its performance led to an audit. The city has not yet heard back on the results of that application, but officials have said they’re expecting big changes — ranging from receiving less money than before, to a change in the age distribution of seats, to losing the grant altogether — creating uncertainty for providers and families.

On top of that, U.S. Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. abruptly closed five of the 10 regional Head Start offices across the country, including New York’s, in late March, leaving providers in the dark about who is reviewing the city’s grant applications and when — or if — they’ll hear back.

“There’s a question of … are they reviewing these applications at all?” said Bridget O’Rourke, the associate executive director of early childhood education at University Settlement.

In the longer term, Project 2025, the conservative blueprint that has guided Trump’s early policy efforts, calls for the elimination of Head Start, claiming it’s “fraught with scandal and abuse” and has little positive impact, despite extensive research showing the opposite. And Trump is proposing to end Head Start’s funding in his initial budget proposal, USA Today reported last week, though a final budget must be approved by Congress.

To help allay some of those concerns, Education Department officials met with providers who subcontract from the city on Tuesday and assured them that if the federal government slashes the city’s grant, the city will use its own money to keep those programs going next year, according to a provider on the call.

City officials didn’t immediately say how much money they’d set aside for that scenario. And while the city’s commitment gives some assurance to providers who subcontract from the Education Department, it doesn’t extend to programs that contract directly from the federal government, according to people familiar with the plans.

Those programs, which serve thousands of city students, are still reeling from the closure of the New York regional office, and many are waiting to hear back on their own grant applications.

“Right now … direct service has not been impacted,” said Rita Santelia, the chief executive officer of Mosholu Montefiore Community Center, which enrolls 400 students across Head Start and Early Head Start programs. “But we as providers are on tenterhooks… we’re not sure when the shoe is going to drop. You can’t operate with this level of fear.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Cellphone bans, school funding, and child care vouchers: How NY’s budget will affect NYC families

2025-04-14T19:56:46+00:00

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Several education issues with big implications for New York City families remain in limbo as Albany officials have blown past the April 1 state budget deadline.

At stake are hundreds of millions of dollars for New York City public schools, the future of child care subsidies for thousands of low-income families, and a proposal from Gov. Kathy Hochul to ban cellphones in classrooms.

“None of them are put to bed yet,” state Sen. John Liu, who helms the senate’s NYC education committee, told Chalkbeat.

Officials have repeatedly extended current spending levels since the April 1 deadline, with the latest extension set to expire Tuesday. Legislative leaders are still hammering out agreements with Hochul over a range of contentious policies that have been lumped into the budget process, including rollbacks to discovery reform and restrictions on wearing face masks in public.

As negotiations drag on, here are three issues to watch that affect New York City public schools and families.

A ‘bell-to-bell’ cellphone ban

Hochul’s most prominent education proposal is a ban on cellphones from “bell to bell” — requiring every school to collect phones or use lockable pouches to prevent students from accessing their phones during the school day.

The Hochul administration is optimistic about securing the ban, though the specifics remain uncertain. The state Senate’s proposal includes an exemption during “non-instructional time” and calls for a prohibition on suspending students who violate the policy. Some parents and the New York Civil Liberties Union have also pushed back against a full phone ban.

“There seems to be broad agreement on the cellphone ban,” Liu said. “But the devil — meaning the details — are more elusive.”

Roughly half of New York City public schools already have cellphone restrictions in place. Still, schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos testified at a budget hearing earlier this year that the state should set aside more funding to help schools pay for devices to store phones. The governor budgeted $13.5 million for districts across the state.

The future of the state’s school funding formula

Nearly everyone agrees the state’s two-decade-old school funding formula, known as Foundation Aid, needs an overhaul. There is less consensus about how to accomplish that — and hundreds of millions of dollars for New York City public schools hang in the balance.

Under Hochul’s proposal, New York City public schools would receive about $350 million less than under the current formula, which sent about $9.5 billion to city schools this year. The governor’s proposal replaces a 2000 Census poverty weight with a more recent Census measure, but it does not account for differences in local costs of living.

The Senate and Assembly both proposed versions that incorporate regional differences in cost of living. The Senate proposal would restore about $288 million relative to the governor’s changes and the Assembly’s version calls for including about $200 million, according to a report from the Alliance for Quality Education, an advocacy group that pushes for more school funding.

A coalition of more than 100 organizations that represent parents and advocates have called for other changes that would drive more funding to high-need districts, including additional weights for students living in temporary housing and children with disabilities.

Several advocates argue that solid funding from the state is even more essential given rising costs from tariffs and threats from the federal government to withhold funding from districts that run afoul of the Trump administration’s priorities.

Child care vouchers for needy families

Thousands of low-income New York City families could lose child care vouchers without a nearly $1 billion funding increase.

The Child Care Assistance Program supports about 80,000 families and has grown substantially in recent years due to a mix of pandemic federal relief funding (which is drying up), changes that expanded eligibility for the program, and a boost in the voucher’s value to about $300 a week on average.

Without $823 million to $907 million in additional funding over the next year and a half, up to 7,000 families a month will begin to lose the subsidies, one analysis found, a major blow for families grappling with hefty child care costs.

Hochul’s budget proposal includes no additional funding for the program, though a spokesperson for the governor noted that state funding for child care subsidies have grown significantly in recent years while the city’s share has barely budged. The Senate’s plan adds about $50 million to the program while the Assembly proposed $213 million, New York Focus reported.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Let the hiring spree begin: NYC OKs school plans for 3,700 new teachers, 100 assistant principals

2025-04-09T19:19:16+00:00

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New York City is giving schools extra funding to hire 3,700 teachers and 100 assistant principals to comply with a major class size reduction mandate, officials announced Wednesday.

The new educators will be distributed across 750 schools that submitted proposals earlier this year to reduce class sizes. About 800 schools submitted applications that were reviewed by the Education Department and unions representing teachers and school administrators.

The move is the most significant effort yet to meet aggressive new class size rules required by a 2022 state law. Most classrooms must be capped at 20 to 25 students depending on the grade level, down from 30 to 34 under current rules.

About 46% of public school classrooms fall within the new state caps, a number that is required to rise to 60% by September.

City officials said they are confident that the new wave of teacher hiring will allow schools to hit that threshold by the deadline. But they did not immediately say how much the additional educators would cost, where the funding is coming from, or which schools would benefit.

Mayor Eric Adams, flanked by the leaders of the principal and teacher unions at Wednesday’s announcement, said smaller classes will give students more opportunity for individual attention, boost learning, and help students regulate their emotions.

“There’s no intellectual conversation we need to have,” the mayor said. “It works, and it has to be done.”

That represents an about-face for Adams, whose administration previously expressed deep reservations about the state class size law, arguing that it amounts to an unfunded mandate that would require billions in additional spending on teacher hiring and school construction. Additionally, experts and the state’s top education official have raised concerns that the city’s highest-poverty schools stand to benefit the least from the additional hiring, as they already tend to have smaller class sizes.

Multiple school principals said they were grateful for the extra money. Staff salaries typically come out of individual school budgets, which are allocated based on how many students enroll and whether they have additional needs, such as a disability, are behind grade level, or come from a low-income family. Money for the new staff comes directly from the Education Department, circumventing the usual funding formula.

Principals fear a cutthroat teacher hiring season

Evan Schwartz, principal of Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical Education High School in the Bronx, recently learned his school will receive extra funding to hire two additional teachers. The news came a day before the school planned to participate in a hiring fair, allowing administrators to recruit four teachers instead of two.

“It’s good they’re getting this out as quickly as possible,” Schwartz said. “It’s very difficult to hire a teacher at the end of the summer.”

Schwartz estimated that at least 90% of his school’s classes will fall under the new caps thanks to the additional two teachers. He also proposed paying staff to teach an extra class on top of their regular schedules, though the Education Department has yet to approve funding requests for such measures.

Other principals said they were glad to have the extra staff but worried about finding qualified educators. City officials estimate that they will have to hire between 7,000 and 9,000 teachers by this fall, up from roughly 5,000 in a typical year.

“It’s going to be a battle,” said one high school principal whose request for additional teachers was approved and spoke on condition of anonymity. “I still don’t think there’s this core of great candidates out there who haven’t been hired yet.”

Studies have found that students generally learn more in smaller class sizes and that children from low-income families may benefit the most. But some of those benefits are tempered by a decline in teacher quality when schools are forced to hire new staff.

Experts have warned of other tradeoffs associated with the hiring frenzy.

Since affluent schools are more likely to have crowded classrooms, they will likely need more teachers, and a significant chunk of those educators may come from higher-poverty campuses. That could exacerbate existing challenges with turnover, one report found.

Questions remain on meeting full mandate by 2028

City officials have also yet to reveal plans to comply with the class size law beyond this September, when 60% of classrooms are required to meet the new caps. All classrooms must meet the new limits by September 2028.

In some cases, officials said schools won funding to convert other space into classrooms. But hundreds of school buildings don’t have the space to comply with the new caps, and officials may be forced to issue exemptions from the law.

The city could also cap enrollment on some popular campuses, a move favored by some class size advocates but which also faces resistance from parents vying for coveted school seats. (Some principals requested enrollment caps as part of their class size proposals but were denied.)

Another idea is to ramp up school construction to create new buildings for overcrowded schools, but those efforts are costly and typically take years. Plus, the School Construction Authority predicts that school enrollment is going to decline substantially over the next decade.

Some advocates praised the new funding but criticized the city for not yet revealing a broader plan to reach full compliance.

“The [Education Department] has refused to take positive steps to ensure that they will have more space in the future,” said Leonie Haimson, the executive director of Class Size Matters. “This means it is extremely unlikely that the city will meet the requirement of 80% -100% of classes achieving the caps in the last two years of the phase-in, as required by law.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NYC students call on Mayor Adams to invest more in schools, child care, and immigrant aid

2025-04-08T21:54:19+00:00

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High school sophomore Samira Barotova is long past preschool age, but she acutely felt the impact of the city’s child care crisis.

When her little brother couldn’t get a spot in the city’s free 3-K program, Samira started getting pressure from her mom to skip afternoon volleyball practice to help look after him.

“Volleyball was my life,” said Samira, a student at Leaders High School in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. “But it was nothing compared to my brother.” Still, when she watched him, she felt ”emptiness in my heart.”

It wasn’t until Samira did some research and helped her mom obtain a voucher that subsidizes the cost of child care for low-income families that she could fully resume her extracurricular activities.

That experience is part of what drove Samira to speak out, alongside dozens of her classmates and members of the People’s Plan, a progressive coalition pushing for additional investments in social services, at the Education Department’s downtown headquarters on Thursday. They demanded additional investments in early childhood education, support for immigrant students, arts education, mental health, and CUNY.

The rally was the culmination of a project in the 10th-grade English classes at Leaders, a member of the city’s consortium of schools that are mostly exempt from Regents exams and prioritize student-driven projects. Students researched the city’s budget and zeroed in on the shortfalls that most directly affected their lives. Several of the students’ specific budget proposals align with recommendations from the People’s Plan.

The city’s budget is due at the end of June, and the City Council recently called on Mayor Eric Adams to add roughly $800 million for education programs he left out of his preliminary budget. The state budget, which is now more than a week late, will also have huge ripple effects on the city’s schools — with hundreds of millions in education dollars and the fate of the child care voucher program hanging in the balance.

Lack of child care forces older siblings to pick up the slack

Samira wasn’t the only student to notice that a lack of child care can increase the burden on older siblings. Malk Elgamal, another Leaders student, remembered that when she was a toddler, she stayed home all day with her mom until her older siblings came home, allowing her mom to leave for work.

“I didn’t understand it then, but behind the scenes, my siblings were rushing to get home from school,” she said. “If I had a place to go, my sister would have been able to go out with her friends after school. My brother could have played sports.”

Malk and Samira joined the chorus of lawmakers and advocates who have called on Adams to restore hundreds of millions of dollars for early childhood education left out of his preliminary budget.

Students want more aid and protections for immigrants

President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants is top of mind for students at Leaders, who hail from countries including Uzbekistan, China, and Russia.

Rida Noor, an 11th grader who arrived with her family eight months ago from Pakistan, understands how critical it is to have access to legal services, and she urged the city to invest an additional $59 million to subsidize legal support for immigrant families, one of the proposals in the People’s Plan.

She recounted how little her own family knew the process for obtaining necessary documentation.

“Everything felt overwhelming. We didn’t understand the laws, what papers we needed, what rules we had to follow,” she said. “I remember my parents whispering late at night… what if a small mistake meant we could no longer stay?”

Merely Salamanca, another Leaders student and the daughter of Mexican immigrants, recalled the moment in 2022 she found out her dad wouldn’t be able to return to the U.S. after a trip back to Mexico.

“I dropped the [phone] on the [floor]. My heart sank. I couldn’t even breathe. The whole world just stopped in that instant,” she said.

“Thousands of families have been going through the same thing I have gone through, which is not something that should be happening in this world,” she said.

Merely called out Adams for “cooperating with Trump’s administration” and demanded that the city invest more to “protect immigrant New Yorkers” in next year’s budget.

Calls to bolster arts education from students and elected officials

As a kid who struggled to fit in and make friends at school, Mia Ottaviani always found solace in art class.

“I learned to channel my emotions through art, connect with others, stay committed to a project and persevere through problems,” she said. “The smell of wet paint, the sight of colorful artwork covering every inch of the walls and the low hum of creation going on all around me will never not bring me comfort.”

But Mia was dismayed to find as she got older that many of the schools she visited had little to no art offerings.

“Lots of the schools didn’t have a dedicated art room, just a small cart with squeaky wheels holding old, dried up paints collecting dust in a storage room,” she recalled.

Just a stone’s throw away from the Leaders rally, at the New York City Council, lawmakers were grilling city officials on that very topic. More than two-thirds of eighth graders in public schools didn’t receive the state-required two semesters of arts education in two different disciplines last school year, according to the council report.

Both Mia and Council Education Committee Chair Rita Joseph called on the Adams administration to maintain $41 million in arts funding that is set to disappear next year.

Pleas for more mental health services to cut long waits

During the darkest days of COVID, stuck in their house while “insecurities ran through [their] body and swam through [their] mind,” Dee Wood finally worked up the courage to seek out a therapist.

But because of a dire shortage of youth mental health providers, Dee was stuck on a waitlist for a year before they actually spoke to a therapist, they said.

“I was lucky enough to be one of those kids who could wait that long,” Dee said. “Some kids are slowly losing themselves to the pain in their brains.”

Dee called on the city to invest $61 million in “Crisis to Care,” an effort to expand mental health services and reduce waitlists. Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who made an appearance at the rally, echoed that call — and slammed Adams for recently touting a school mental health program that he declined to fund in his preliminary budget.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

NYC Council wants $800 million more for education than Eric Adams proposed

2025-04-02T20:27:18+00:00

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Leaders of New York’s City Council said Wednesday they will push Mayor Eric Adams to add roughly $800 million in education funding to the city’s final budget.

Of that $800 million, roughly $280 million would go towards early childhood education, around $180 million would support CUNY, and the remainder would go to K-12 schools, according to budget documents.

The council’s total request for additional education-related expenses is about $1.6 billion, once capital projects are included.

Increasing investment in the city’s strained child care system is front and center in the council’s annual budget response. Legislators called on Adams to restore nearly $200 million for the city’s free 3-K and Pre-K programs excluded from the mayor’s January preliminary budget proposal. Council members said they will also push for an additional $84 million to expand access to child care vouchers.

“This year, we’re once again fighting for the resources that are critical to neighborhoods across the city,” said Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, a Queens Democrat who is challenging Adams for the party’s nomination for mayor. “Early childhood education remains a top priority for this council because we know it is critical for children’s development and working families.”

The budget response offers the first full look at the council’s priorities as budget negotiations with City Hall kick off. Mayor Adams is expected to release his executive budget by May 1, and the council and mayor are supposed to agree on an adopted budget by the end of June.

This year, the city is not facing the same acute financial pressures as in recent years when billions in federal COVID relief ended up and the city incurred billions in new costs from the influx of migrants, the council noted. The council also projects billions more in revenues than the Adams administration.

But there are still big financial risks — including the possibility that the state budget could reduce funding for the city in several key areas. The Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to slash federal spending also complicate the city’s fiscal outlook, council members said.

Child care has emerged as a major sticking point in budget negotiations. Mayor Adams has consistently pushed to slash spending, arguing that the city needs a more sustainable plan that cuts down on unfilled seats. But council members and advocates counter that child care access should expand as the city confronts an ongoing affordability crisis.

At issue in this year’s budget is nearly $197 million for 3-K and Pre-K that the city funded this year, but which Adams did not include in his preliminary budget. That includes $112 million for 3-K, $55 million for special education preschool seats, $25 million for extended day programs, and $5 million for outreach.

Many of the education initiatives the council is now fighting to save were previously supported by federal COVID aid that ran dry last year. The council successfully pushed the city to replace the funding for many of those programs — but in some cases only for a year.

Beyond restoring that $197 million, the council is also pushing for an additional $84 million to expand access to child care vouchers, which families can use to subsidize the cost of programs for infants and toddlers or afterschool care.

The city’s main voucher program, the Childcare Assistance Program, reaches nearly 80,000 families and is funded almost entirely by the state. The program now faces a yawning budget gap that could force the city to kick thousands of families out of the program each month unless the state increases funding by nearly a billion dollars in this budget, city officials have warned.

The council’s budget response asks the city to chip in an additional $24 million a year to raise the income eligibility for the voucher program from around $108,000 for a family of four to $128,000.

The council also wants to expand a new city program called Promise NYC, which provides vouchers to undocumented families not eligible for the state-funded program to 3,500 children. That’s a $60 million annual investment.

Rebecca Bailin, the executive director of New Yorkers United for Child Care, called the council’s proposal “a step in the right direction on the path to universal child care for all that will keep families in New York.”

Outside of early childhood, the council is pushing to restore funding to a number of K-12 programs previously funded by federal relief, and renewed in last year’s budget for only a year.

That includes $5 million for a new school mental health program Mayor Adams recently touted at a press conference, $14 million for community schools that bring in outside nonprofits to provide additional services to kids and families, and $41 million for arts education.

The council also calls for $10 million for “affinity” high schools that work with outside networks, and $4 million for tutoring. The council proposes another $65 million for school nurses, $154 million to replace expiring federal funding for custodial services, and $10 million to help recruit more school cafeteria workers.

In addition to the roughly $800 million more the council wants for education programs, legislators are also seeking more than $800 million in education-related capital expenses. That includes an additional $150 million for cafeteria enhancements and $450 million more to make school buildings accessible to students with physical handicaps.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

With thousands more teachers needed to meet class size law, NYC embarks on historic hiring spree

2025-04-01T22:52:30+00:00

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New York City schools are gearing up for a historic hiring spree as thousands more teachers are needed this fall to shrink class sizes across the five boroughs.

In a typical year, the city Education Department hires between 4,000 and 5,000 new teachers to fill gaps left by those who retire, move, or leave for other reasons. But by September, officials have recently said the city is aiming to hire between 7,000 and 9,000 new educators to meet a major class size deadline: bringing 60% of classrooms citywide under the caps mandated by the state’s sweeping class size law.

Currently, about 46% of classes comply with the law, which caps K-3 classes at 20 students, 4-8 classes at 23 students, and high school classes at 25. All classrooms must meet the limits by Sept. 2028.

The hiring boom presents both a major opportunity and an unprecedented challenge for city schools.

On one hand, hundreds of schools are likely to have more money than usual, guaranteed earlier in the year than is typical, to hire teachers, thanks to a new city initiative that allowed schools to apply for additional funding to lower class sizes. But the marked uptick in demand for teachers will also put a new strain on the city’s ability to recruit candidates — particularly amid an ongoing state and national teacher shortage.

The flood of new job postings is also expected to increase churn within the system as public school teachers leave their current placements for more desirable openings — a pattern administrators and officials fear will disproportionately harm schools that have traditionally had the hardest time hiring and retaining teachers, including high-poverty schools and those located in the Bronx and parts of Brooklyn.

“That volume is a lot, and we are actually concerned about meeting the volume,” said Amy Way, the executive director of the Education Department’s Office of Teacher Recruitment and Quality, earlier this month at a panel on teacher morale co-sponsored by EdWeek and Chalkbeat. “There really has been a decline in people entering the teaching profession.”

Some 750 schools submitted applications requesting a combined 4,000 additional teachers, officials said recently. Responses to the applications are expected as soon as this week despite the city’s initial promise to provide answers by February. United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew told teachers in an email last week that nearly 90% of schools that applied are expected to get some or all the funding they requested.

“This will be the first time ever that all these schools are going to be told…‘You will have the funding directly in your budgets for this,‘” Mulgrew said recently on the education podcast Talk Out of School. “You’re going to have hundreds of schools who are looking to hire early, way before June. So this is going to be an interesting dynamic for our school system.”

School leaders are preparing for a tumultuous few months.

“It’s going to be a bloodbath out there for hiring if all of these schools are getting all or some of the allotment they’re asking for,” said one Manhattan principal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize his application. “Some schools are going to have a really hard time attracting teachers when you have really well-resourced schools in very accessible parts of the city hiring too.”

The Education Department already has some measures in place to increase the teacher pipeline and to mitigate the effects of churn within the system. Programs like NYC Men Teach and NYC Teaching Fellows have made strides in attracting more diverse candidates by offering extra support and an expedited path into the profession.

The city also offers some incentives to help fill historically hard-to-staff roles and schools, including monetary bonuses and early hiring privileges. The Education Department didn’t immediately respond to questions about which specific roles were eligible for bonuses, but a spokesperson pointed to a new teacher residency program funded by the state and career training for paraprofessionals seeking to become teachers.

“We’re acutely aware that we’ve got to make sure we up our game,” said First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg at a recent town hall in Brooklyn’s District 19. “So we’re going to do even more going forward.”

Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle added Tuesday, “We are leaving no stone unturned.”

A supply and demand question

The most basic question facing the city as it prepares for its hiring spree is whether the supply of teachers can meet the demand.

New York City historically hasn’t been hit as hard as other parts of the state and country by teacher shortages thanks to the steady flow of people migrating to the five boroughs and the relatively high teacher salaries.

But the city isn’t immune to the challenges facing the profession. The teaching force shrunk during the pandemic thanks to higher levels of attrition and reduced hiring, though the Education Department said it grew by 1,000 teachers from last school year to this one. Several roles, including high school math and science, special education, and bilingual teachers remain chronically understaffed.

The number of students who completed traditional college teacher preparation programs in New York dropped from over 22,000 in 2012 to under 15,000 a decade later. And only 9,000 people across the entire state of New York received a new teaching certification in the 2018-19 school year, including those in traditional teacher prep and alternative certification programs, according to data city Education Department officials shared with the class size working group in 2023.

Supporters hope lower class sizes will be extra enticement. Some principals have already gotten interest from teachers in other parts of the state attracted by the prospect of the class size caps, according to a union source.

And if the city does manage to meet the elevated hiring demand, some administrators and experts are concerned that the quality of candidates could diminish. Some past research has suggested that the educational benefits of reduced class sizes are offset by a decline in teacher quality when schools are forced to staff up.

The elevated teacher hiring is expected to continue at least for the next three years as the class size law fully phases in, reaching as high as 10,000 new teachers in a year, officials say.

Even for schools who fill all their vacancies with great candidates, the sheer quantity of new teachers will present its own challenges, officials say.

“I think about what is it going to be like for a school to have so many new teachers so many years in a row,” said Way. “What are the supports in place?”

Increased competition could disadvantage some schools

The hiring spree will almost certainly increase competition for in-demand candidates — a situation that could spell trouble for schools already at a disadvantage in the hiring process.

The highest-poverty schools tend to have more unfilled positions and teacher turnover, according to city data. Schools in the Bronx and Brooklyn are the most likely to lose teachers who transfer within the city Education Department to other boroughs.

“I’m a little nervous, just because of the amount of teachers that I know we have to hire and every school has to hire, and how many good teachers are available,” said Crystal Johnson, a teacher and director of operations at Baychester Middle School in the Bronx, which is hoping to hire five or six teachers this year, compared to two or three normally.

The Education Department has set up some systems to ensure schools like Johnson’s aren’t left behind. Schools in hard-to-staff neighborhoods get early access to the city’s new teacher finder, a hiring platform for teachers new to the city’s public schools. The Education Department also offers a $1,000 early commitment bonus for certain hard-to-fill positions, and it gives her school early access to hiring fairs, Johnson said.

But some educators say those incentives don’t go far enough and pale in comparison to past efforts — like the “Bronx plan” under former Mayor Bill de Blasio that offered signing bonuses of up to $8,000.

Johnson said she appreciates the early hiring access, but the fairs often fill up before she can book a spot. Because of the increased competition, Johnson said her school is revising its approach this year to more quickly send out offers to candidates they like.

Hiring spree sparks new possibilities

For all of the challenges, some educators hope the hiring spree will pay off in both the short and long term.

“Twenty kids in a kindergarten to third-grade class is monumental for student learning,” said the Manhattan principal, who usually hires one or two new teachers a year but could have as many as nine openings this year if the school’s class size reduction request is approved.

Kiri Soares, the principal of the Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women in downtown Brooklyn, hopes the increased hiring needs will force a deeper conversation about expanding the teaching pipeline.

Soares wants to see more investment in starting to train and recruit future teachers in K-12 public schools and additional support for paraprofessionals seeking to get their teacher certification.

Angel Diaz, a senior at Lehman College in the Bronx who is set to start next year as a history teacher at his alma mater, the Urban Assembly School for Applied Math and Science, benefited from exactly that type of support.

Diaz, a former after-school program worker and paraprofessional, got extra guidance and monetary support from the program NYC Men Teach. He said he now can’t imagine teaching anywhere other than in the Bronx community where he grew up.

“My goal is just to continue being the person [I] wish [I] would’ve had in these schools,” he said.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

NYC school funding fight: Hochul’s budget plan faces pushback over $350 million shortfall

2025-03-28T21:15:26+00:00

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Ahead of an April 1 budget deadline, state lawmakers are pushing back on a proposal from Gov. Kathy Hochul that would result in New York City’s school system receiving $350 million less than expected.

Hochul proposed tweaking the state’s nearly two-decade-old school funding formula, known as Foundation Aid, to update how student poverty is measured. There has been widespread agreement that the formula needs to change, but some want to see a more significant revamp than the governor’s plan — with additional adjustments that would help high-need districts like New York City.

And many advocates want to see the state step up at a time when the Trump administration has been gutting the U.S. Department of Education’s staff and taking steps to dismantle the agency.

“It’s important that we recognize that a budget is a moral document, and what you put in a budget shows us what you are concerned about,” NeQuan McLean, a parent leader from Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn and president of the Education Council Consortium, said at a rally in Albany this week.

Foundation Aid takes student need into account, providing additional funding to districts that serve higher populations of students in poverty, among other factors. Needs are typically high across the five boroughs, where more than 70% of students live in poverty. New York City schools are seeing additional strains, many advocates say, after welcoming an estimated 48,000 migrant students since summer 2022, many of whom need dedicated English language instruction as well as other social support. More than 16% of students citywide are learning English as a new language.

State Sen. John Liu, a Queens Democrat who chairs the Senate’s New York City education committee, pledged to keep the pressure on Hochul. “In these last rounds of budget negotiations, we’re going to fight to make sure New York City is not shortchanged,” he said.

A spokesperson from Hochul’s office said the governor has delivered more funding to public schools than any previous New York governor and noted that her proposed total education plan of $14 billion for fiscal year 2026 represents a $703 million increase from the previous year.

How much money does NYC get through Foundation Aid?

When it comes to school funding, New York City gets seven times more money from the state than the federal government.

Of this year’s roughly $40 billion New York City Education Department budget, about 37% — or $15 billion — came from the state. More than $9.5 billion of that money came through the state’s Foundation Aid formula.

When was the Foundation Aid formula created?

The formula traces its origins back to a landmark court case the Campaign for Fiscal Equity filed more than 30 years ago against the state, alleging that its school funding system violated the constitutional rights of New York City students to a “sound basic education.”

After a prolonged legal battle, the state’s highest court agreed, paving the way for Foundation Aid. But the fight didn’t end there. After the formula was implemented in 2007, it took more than a decade before it was fully funded.

By the time Hochul and the state legislature agreed to fully fund Foundation Aid in 2023, however, the formula was outdated.

What is Hochul proposing for Foundation Aid?

Hochul’s proposed tweaks would update the poverty weight, replacing the 2000 Census poverty rate with the most recent Census Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates. But advocates complain that this data relies on inadequate federal poverty guidelines with no adjustments for local cost of living, which in turn would result in New York City getting $350 million less than it would under the current formula.

The current federal poverty threshold for a family of four is roughly $32,150 a year. Making ends meet on that amount of money in New York City likely looks very different than in other parts of the state, advocates point out.

(Hochul also proposed the formula stop using federal free- and reduced-price lunch eligibility as a basis for measuring student need, instead switching to broader “economically disadvantaged” student counts — a change could benefit the city.)

What did the Senate and the Assembly propose for the formula?

In their one-house budgets, both the Senate and Assembly proposed updating the formula’s Regional Cost Index, which aims to address variations for cost of living expenses in different parts of the state. This hasn’t been updated since 2006, and New York City’s living expenses have greatly increased over the past 20 years.

The New York Board of Regents as well as a report from the Rockefeller Institute called for updating this metric. The governor, however, did not include an update to the Regional Cost Index, though she proposed updating the outmoded poverty data.

The proposed updates from the Senate and Assembly would help offset the shortfall from the governor’s changes. The Senate proposed restoring about $288 million, while the Assembly’s proposal called for including about $200 million, according to a report released Friday by the Alliance for Quality Education, which has long fought to fully fund the Foundation Aid formula.

The Assembly also proposed increasing the formula’s weight for students learning English as a new language, which would direct about $152 million to New York City. Schools have seen a significant increase in the number of English language learners enrolled over the past few years, and many schools are still struggling to meet their instructional needs.

What else are advocates calling for?

In addition to updating the Regional Cost Index, a coalition of more than 100 organizations want the formula to include additional weights for students in temporary housing, those in foster care, and students with disabilities.

They want more funding for students in the city’s free preschool programs for 3- and 4-year-olds. And they want more resources to help New York City implement the state’s mandate to limit class sizes.

Many advocates are urging the state to ensure schools are adequately funded as possible federal funding cuts could hurt programs that provide school meals and support students from low-income households and students with disabilities.

“The consequences will be severe: more children going hungry, more families without the support they need, and even wider educational disparities,” the Alliance for Quality Education report said, “especially for Black, brown, immigrant, and lower-income students.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Thousands of NYC families could lose child care vouchers amid nearly $1 billion funding shortfall

2025-03-27T23:10:33+00:00

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Thousands of low-income New York City families could see their child care vouchers abruptly yanked away if the state doesn’t add nearly a billion dollars to the program in the coming budget, advocates and city officials have warned in recent weeks.

The Child Care Assistance Program, which provides vouchers averaging $300 a week to nearly 80,000 families, saw a boom in enrollment across the five boroughs over the past several years thanks to pandemic eligibility changes and an infusion of one-time federal funding.

But the program is now facing a perfect storm of budgetary threats as federal aid dries up, child care costs continue to rise, and COVID-era waivers that likely kept many families home with their kids expire, leaving a massive funding shortfall.

As a result, if state funding for the program doesn’t increase next year, the city may have to begin removing vouchers from between 4,000 and 7,000 low-income families each month, according to an analysis from the Center for NYC Affairs at the New School.

That would be a major hardship for Mansie Meikle, a Queens mother of three who uses the vouchers to subsidize the cost of after-school care. She said she was unable to work before getting the vouchers because she couldn’t afford child care. Now, she worries she could end up “right back at square one.”

“I fought three years to get out of that cycle of not having child care and to just think of being back in that place, it’s really, really not a good feeling at all,” she said.

Overall, the city would need between $823 and $907 million in additional state funding over the next year and a half in order to avoid kicking families out of the voucher program, the New School analysis estimates.

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s executive budget proposal includes no increase in funding for the vouchers, while the senate’s plan adds $50 million, and the assembly adds $213 million, according to New York Focus, which first reported the funding shortfall.

The state’s budget is supposed to be finalized by April 1.

Avery Cohen, a Hochul spokesperson, said the governor has “increased funding for childcare subsidies in New York City by 124% while City spending has remained relatively flat.”

“We will continue to support these vital programs and ensure as many families remain enrolled as possible,” Cohen added.

Some city and state lawmakers have criticized Mayor Eric Adams for not being proactive enough about the looming shortfall and failing to make it a priority in budget negotiations with the state.

Allison Maser, an Adams spokesperson, said the “vouchers have been integral to our efforts in reducing the cost of child care.” City officials said they have held nearly 200 meetings with state lawmakers about the voucher program in the last month.

A victim of its own success

The voucher program’s current precarious financial position is, in some ways, a result of its resounding success in recent years, advocates said.

Prior to the pandemic, most vouchers went to families receiving cash assistance, a state welfare program for families out of work or whose jobs don’t pay enough. Typically under that program, parents are required to work, and the state is obligated to provide them child care vouchers.

During the pandemic, the state lifted work requirements for parents receiving cash assistance, which advocates said likely led to more families staying home, leaving them with less need for child care. The number of vouchers for families receiving cash assistance dropped from more than 51,000 in 2017 to a low of just over 19,000 in 2022, according to the New School analysis.

That huge drop, combined with extra federal relief funds, allowed the state and city to open the program to a wider swath of low-income families who do not receive cash assistance. The state raised the eligibility threshold to 85% of the state median income, or about $108,000 for a family of four.

In a city where child care remains unaffordable for all but the wealthiest families, newly-eligible families leapt at the offer. Child care vouchers for families not receiving cash assistance increased from 18,000 in 2021 to 56,000 last year.

“Families have flocked to the program because it’s a really good program,” said Dede Hill, director of policy at Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy.

At the same time, state officials nearly doubled the average value of the vouchers, from $154 in 2019 to $301 last year, to meet the rising cost of child care — a change applauded by families and providers.

But the program now faces a funding cliff.

Federal funds that helped subsidize the program’s growth during the pandemic have dried up. And most importantly, the pandemic waiver allowing families to qualify for cash assistance without work requirements is set to expire.

Analysts and city officials predict the end of the waiver will lead to a surge in employment among families receiving cash assistance. And since the state is required to provide child care vouchers for those families, officials expect a concurrent surge in vouchers for families getting cash assistance — from roughly 23,000 currently to as many as 66,000 by March of 2026, according to the New School analysis.

To create room in the budget to fund all the new vouchers for families getting cash assistance — whose child care the state is legally required to subsidize — the city will have to take them away from families not receiving cash assistance. City officials have estimated that could affect between 4,000 and 7,000 families a month.

Advocates, providers warn of ‘ripple effects’

Beyond the devastating impact for individual families, a mass removal of vouchers could destabilize the child care sector, advocates and providers warned.

“This will have a ripple effect,” said Tiffany Diaz, owner and operator of several Bronx home-based day care programs. “In my sites…85% of our income comes from vouchers. Can you imagine 85% of your wages being pulled from under you? I’m not sure how we would be able to survive.”

And if families are unable to afford child care, “they will not be able to then go out to the workforce and contribute to society and contribute to this, this economy,” Diaz added.

Some families might be able to fill one of the more than 11,000 vacant extended school day and year seats in the city’s publicly funded preschool programs for kids up to four years old, the New School analysis pointed out. But funding for some of those programs also remains in question.

Other families, unable to work without access to affordable child care, may end up relying on additional public assistance — underscoring why advocates say the eye-popping number needed to stabilize the voucher program is a worthwhile long-term investment.

“Research shows that investing in child care has massive returns for society,” said Jason Cone, chief public policy officer at Robin Hood. “We have greater workforce participation, predominantly amongst women, who are able to enter the workforce, generate higher incomes and eventually pay more taxes. And it’s a good thing for children as well.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

NYC education panel holds up $517 million in IT spending after losing bidder pleads for delay

2025-03-27T22:37:58+00:00

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Minutes before an education panel was slated to vote on IT contracts worth more than half a billion dollars, one of the losing bidders made an unusual plea to delay the decision.

Despite warnings from city officials about setting a dangerous precedent, the Panel for Educational Policy listened.

“In the three years being on the panel, I’ve never left feeling like, ‘Man what did we just do?’” Greg Faulkner, the chairperson of the panel, told Chalkbeat after the vote. “We’ve just opened the door for others to do the same thing.”

At stake is a five-year, $517 million contract for updates to “core network infrastructure” to improve internet bandwidth in classrooms and administrative offices, city records show. The proposal would allow the city to buy networking equipment, servers, and extended warranties. City officials said the vote could delay a tech “refresh” that was scheduled to roll out this fall.

The panel, which votes on major Education Department spending requests, typically approves contracts easily. Mayor Eric Adams controls the Education Department and also selects 13 of the 24 voting members. But on Wednesday night, city officials could only muster 10 of the 13 votes needed to approve the technology contracts.

The vote came after a striking maneuver by ConvergeOne, one of the nine companies that did not win bids for the technology contract. A company rep, Ron Gill, showed up during a public comment period just before Wednesday’s vote and argued there were “easily identifiable mistakes” in the city’s reasoning for passing over the company. Their bid was also the least expensive — about $119 million less than the winning proposal.

Gill stressed that the company has a meeting scheduled with city officials next week to discuss the matter. “I’m asking you simply to do one thing: Don’t make a decision tonight,” he said.

That argument seemed to persuade some panel members.

“If we set up a follow up with a company to discuss a contract … and then we vote on it before we resolve that, I just think that’s kind of a bit unfair,” said Tom Sheppard, a parent-elected panel member from the Bronx who abstained from the technology vote.

Panel member Camille Casaretti also expressed concern, noting “the DOE stands to lose $120 million” that could be spent on other pressing initiatives. Casaretti, who was appointed by the Brooklyn borough president and abstained, noted that the company had raised concerns in writing before Wednesday’s vote.

Naveed Hasan, another parent-elected panel member who abstained, said it can be difficult to weigh arguments that are brought to the panel immediately before a vote without having time to ask for responses from city officials. “People come to the [panel] and make statements that are new to us while we’re sitting there and it becomes a little bit confusing,” he said.

City records indicate that ConvergeOne wasn’t selected for the contract because information was missing for their proposal, and it was deemed “non-responsive.” The company disputed that determination, but city officials wrote that their “protest was recommended for disposition due to insufficient evidence provided by the vendor.”

The two companies approved by the Education Department for the contracts — Presidio Networked Solutions Group LLC and World Wide Technology LLC — did not respond to messages seeking comment about the panel’s vote.

Companies have the right to challenge the process, but those should flow through official channels, First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg told the panel Wednesday evening.

If the panel acts “outside of the procedures in one case because of what we hear from a losing bidder, then it’s going to be very difficult for us to not do that in every single case when there are losing bidders,” he said. Weisberg added that the city considers price in awarding contracts but it is “never the only factor.”

But even as the mayor appoints the majority of the panel, the administration failed to garner the 13 necessary votes. Nine mayoral appointees voted in favor of the contracts. But Darling Miramey, one of the mayor’s appointees who has previously bucked city proposals, abstained from the vote.

One mayoral appointee was absent and another showed up after the vote had already concluded. An additional mayoral slot is vacant. Faulkner, whom the mayor selected from a list of candidates approved by state officials, voted in favor.

The remaining members, who are appointed by borough president and parent leaders, either voted no or abstained.

Education Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle confirmed that the city plans to meet with ConvergeOne next week, but she stressed that it was a courtesy and that their bid is not being reconsidered.

“We closely follow our established policies and procedures in order to maintain integrity and fairness in the contract process, including for the contract in question,” Lyle wrote.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NY blames U.S. Education Department changes for $363 million reimbursement delay

2025-03-25T21:37:18+00:00

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New York state’s Education Department is having trouble getting reimbursed for $363 million from the federal government, according to state officials who blamed the problem on mass layoffs and other changes at the U.S. Department of Education.

“Just days after the announcement of the [reduction in force], we have already had challenges drawing down funds owed to New York by the Department,” Daniel Morton-Bentley, the deputy commissioner of legal affairs at the state’s Education Department, wrote in a Monday court filing.

Morton-Bentley’s allegation is part of a broader lawsuit filed this month by 21 state attorneys general, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, that seeks to challenge President Donald Trump’s efforts to get rid of half the department’s staff.

In the wake of a March 20 executive order designed to begin the process of closing the federal Education Department, the attorneys general asked a Massachusetts federal judge on Monday for a preliminary injunction to block layoffs and stop efforts to transfer some of its key functions to other agencies, citing the delayed reimbursements to New York, among other issues.

“We sued to stop Trump from dismantling the Department of Education, and today we are seeking a court order to protect students and their families,” James said in a Monday statement.

The claim of payment delays is notable because it is one of the first concrete harms state education officials have linked to Trump’s effort to eliminate the federal Education Department. Other states, including Illinois and New Jersey, have also struggled to access funding or receive guidance from federal staffers, the filing alleges.

The money in question is tied to the Education Stabilization Fund, a tranche of federal relief dollars meant to help schools recover from the pandemic. New York state has received $9.3 billion from the program and was granted additional time to liquidate another $363 million, according to Morton-Bentley. The Education Stabilization Fund includes COVID relief dollars for K-12 schools through a program called ESSER.

Under the Trump administration, the U.S. Education Department began requiring additional sign off from federal staffers to keep the money flowing “to ensure taxpayer funds are expended responsibly,” according to a Feb. 19 press release.

New York state officials contend that efforts to slash the Education Department’s staff has directly affected the employees who are supposed to sign off on the reimbursement requests.

“We have been instructed to send our requests to a new email address but are waiting on additional guidance and instructions for the approval of drawdown requests,” Morton-Bentley wrote.

A representative for the New York State Education Department did not immediately respond to questions about what programs or school districts received the $363 million — and what impact the delayed reimbursement might have. They also did not clarify whether the state has formally submitted a reimbursement request or is waiting for additional guidance before doing so.

New York City Education Department officials said earlier this month they have not yet experienced cuts tied to upheaval in the U.S. Education Department.

A spokesperson for the federal Education Department did not respond to a request for comment. But federal officials wrote to state policymakers earlier this month claiming that sharply reducing the Education Department’s headcount would not adversely affect them.

“These reductions are strategic cuts to offices and programs,” wrote Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Haley Sanon. The changes “will not directly impact students and families but rather empower states and localities.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

‘We’re not changing our policies’: NYC school officials stand firm after Trump executive order

2025-03-21T21:14:57+00:00

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Despite President Donald Trump’s bid to close the U.S. Department of Education, New York City Education Department officials told parents on Friday they are not changing any policies or programming in response.

“We are not changing our policies. We’re not telling schools to change any of their programs or their practices, the way they go about doing things,” said David Mantell, the Education Department’s executive director of policy and advocacy. “Our message continues to be that we know that we’re doing things that are in compliance with the law.”

Trump’s executive order signed Thursday aims to shift more power to states — a longstanding goal of his. At the same time, however, it calls on Education Secretary Linda McMahon to ensure “the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”

Funding from the federal government covers roughly 5% — or $2.2 billion — of New York City’s Education Department budget. The three biggest pots of federal dollars to New York City help high poverty schools through the Title 1 program, offsets the cost of special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, and covers the bulk of school meals, which are free to all public school students through the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The executive order also directs McMahon to ensure that programs receiving federal support “terminate illegal discrimination obscured under the label ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ or similar terms and programs promoting gender ideology,” — a reference to policies intended to create more welcoming environments for students of color and LGBTQ students. This comes on the heels of previous efforts to curb these policies, which has already garnered legal pushback.

Already, the U.S. Department of Education has brought investigations against Illinois and Maine for alleged violations of the Title IX, federal law that prohibits sex discrimination.

“They are throwing a lot out there, creating a lot of fear, sowing a lot of confusion,” Mantell said. “I think that’s part of the point… that they’re hoping that people are just going to kind of comply in advance.”

Mantell added: “These executive orders, these guidance documents: They do not have the same force of law of something passed by Congress, something in the Constitution… All of these things are subject to legal challenges, and the courts are really going to have to sort them out.”

Still, he didn’t want to come across as naive or “paint a rosier picture than it is,” and said the department was preparing accordingly if aid was cut and would deal with such issues as they arise.

The impact of the recent executive order was on the minds of several parents from Lower Manhattan’s Community Education Council, which invited Mantell along with his colleagues Katherine Jedrlinic and Serge St. Leger Jr. — all from the department’s newly created Office of Policy and Advocacy — to a committee meeting to share more insights about their work.

Jedrlinic, the Education Department’s senior executive director for policy and advocacy, told families that officials were working “very hard” on creating materials that explain how “all these wacky” things affect schools and what they’re doing in response.

Parents said they wanted more information in a timely manner, complaining that it took Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos several weeks before she sent out a citywide letter expressing support for the rights for immigrant students. Parents previously complained about the chancellor’s delay in responding to Trump’s executive order on race and gender.

“As a parent, I would love to see that in writing just to see that you are standing up for us, that everything calmed down. You are taking care of it. You are aware,” said Grauven Olivares, the vice president of District 1’s Community Education Council.

Jedrlinic said the Education Department was grappling with getting the message out more broadly, noting there’s a lot of “legalese” involved, and it can be challenging to share a letter that is “static in a situation that’s so dynamic.”

“I think what we’re just trying to impart to people, and we’ve said this to our superintendents, we’ve been saying it to a lot of different advocacy organizations, which is that: We’ll let you know if things are impacting us,” Mantell said, “but for right now what we’re seeing doesn’t have the same force of law, and we’re sticking with what we know is our identity, our values and our policies and practices that have been in place for a long time.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NY Senate pushes back on Hochul’s ‘bell-to-bell’ school cellphone ban

2025-03-11T21:46:15+00:00

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Pushing back against Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal to ban cellphones from “bell-to-bell” in schools, New York lawmakers want to give districts more flexibility in setting their policies — and guarantee that students will not face suspensions due to cellphone violations.

The proposed changes came Tuesday as Senate Democrats unveiled their response to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s $252 billion executive budget, which would send $37.4 billion to schools across the state — a nearly $1.7 billion increase from the prior year’s budget. The governor’s budget proposal includes a $13.5 million plan to help school districts implement smartphone bans, amid growing concerns over their impact on student learning and mental health.

Under the governor’s proposal, students would be required to disconnect from their devices from “bell to bell,” including during classes, lunch, and in the hallways. School districts would have discretion over how to ensure compliance, but all would be required to identify at least one method through which students can store their devices during the school day.

However, lawmakers in the state Senate are seeking changes to the proposed legislation that would give districts leeway to allow students to use their devices “during non-instruction time.” Lawmakers also want districts to be required to consult local representatives and families, as well as be prohibited from suspending students over violations of the cellphone policy.

State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said lawmakers agreed with Hochul that “getting cellphones out of the hands of our children is a benefit to everyone.”

“We’ve heard from superintendents who want a little bit of flexibility, so we have injected that into the conversation,” Stewart-Cousins added during a Tuesday press conference. “But there is no doubt that we know that students will be better off if their phones are not with them and they’re able to concentrate on their lessons.”

The proposed changes to Hochul’s cellphone policy came as part of the Senate’s “one-house budget resolution,” its rebuttal to the governor’s executive budget. (The state Assembly’s one-house budget resolution did not address the issue).

Senate lawmakers also proposed changes to the state’s school funding formula that would see additional dollars sent to schools across the state — up $680 million from Hochul’s Foundation Aid proposal. Those changes would drive additional money to city schools, with lawmakers proposing an update to how the formula accounts for regional costs in the Hudson Valley and New York City.

Despite concerns from the Senate, Hochul said Tuesday she remained committed to pushing for a “bell-to-bell” cellphone restriction.

“I’ve not had time to digest every part of what the one-houses show, but I’m committed to fighting for bell-to-bell,” she said. “This is what the experts say, this is what the parents want, this is what the teachers want. I mean, our teachers are saying… if a student has it banned during a class, then they have it during recess, and then they come back, the next teacher has to be the enforcer.”

In New York City, principals currently can set their own cellphone policies during school hours. Among those with restrictions in place, some schools collect devices at the start of the day, while others store them in cubbies or locking pouches. And though the city’s Education Department seemed poised to implement a systemwide policy last year, it stalled after intervention by Mayor Eric Adams.

When schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos testified at a budget hearing in Albany earlier this year, she urged lawmakers to allocate more funding to implement a statewide school cellphone ban, arguing $13.5 million was insufficient to cover statewide costs.

“Roughly 800 of our schools have already signed up to do this work,” she told lawmakers in January. “What we don’t want to tell them is, ‘Continue to self-fund while we pay for other schools to get on the bus.’”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

NYC teachers union pushes unusual method to win $10,000 raise for paras: legislation

2025-01-30T23:55:22+00:00

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New York City’s teachers union is pushing for substantial raises for paraprofessionals, an effort to address shortages of the classroom aides who serve students with disabilities.

But in an unusual maneuver, the union wants to secure those pay bumps through legislation rather than in the traditional contract bargaining process — an effort that generated pushback from City Hall and even some paraprofessionals.

A handful of City Council members said Thursday they plan to introduce a bill soon that would mandate annual pay increases of at least $10,000 for paraprofessionals, also known as paras. The starting salary for paras is just shy of $32,000 a year, about half of what regular classroom teachers earn. The raises would cost about $260 million a year, said Rita Joseph, who chairs City Council’s education committee.

“It is becoming more and more difficult for us to recruit and retain what I consider to be the essential piece of special education, which is the paraprofessional,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, which represents city educators.

Advancing legislation to boost para pay represents the latest salvo in the union’s campaign to call attention to special education staffing shortages. There are more than 1,600 unfilled para positions, according to figures the Education Department shared with the City Council. In the fall, there were about 23,564 active paraprofessionals, a nearly 8% decline since June 2020.

The lack of staff can have devastating implications for students with disabilities. In some cases, students are not able to participate in job training programs or attend mainstream classes because there is no staffer to accompany them. In extreme cases, some students have not been able to attend school at all because they are not allowed to ride a yellow bus without a dedicated aide.

The push to increase pay for paraprofessionals comes as Mulgrew is up for re-election this year and some of the educators who hope to unseat him have called attention to the pay disparities.

The union chief said the city has been unwilling to give paras significant raises in contract negotiations without asking other members of the union to accept smaller pay bumps to finance it. The union typically adheres to “pattern bargaining” in which municipal unions agree to similar pay increases, which Mulgrew said limits their ability to secure more significant raises for paras.

Union officials said they were unaware of any previous efforts to secure wage increases for city union workers through legislation.

Some union activists who oppose the union’s leadership said the move may be an effort to help shore up votes, as the union has faced bruising battles over health care and the union leader won his last election with a smaller margin than usual.

“I don’t understand why [Mulgrew is] presenting this in a bill with some council members when he had the opportunity to fight for this in our contract negotiations,” said Marie Wausnock, a union executive board member who co-founded a slate called Fix Para Pay which largely opposes Mulgrew’s Unity caucus. She noted the pay bumps Mulgrew is pushing for would not count toward their pensions.

A spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams indicated that any pay increases should be bargained in regular contract negotiations and noted paras received raises under a contract deal reached in 2023 and which runs until 2027.

“Paraprofessionals are crucial in the educational experience of our families, and we recognize the importance of ensuring fair compensation for all members of our educational workforce,” City Hall spokesperson Allison Maser wrote in an email. “We look forward to discussing all of the union’s economic demands in the next round of collective bargaining.”

The proposed legislation already has some support. A handful of lawmakers rallied Thursday morning in front of City Hall to press their case for it.

“We can solve this issue with an investment in this workforce that is so needed,” said City Council member Carmen De La Rosa.

Local lawmakers said they intend to push for funding during negotiations for next school year’s budget, which wrap up by the end of June. They did not immediately provide text of the legislation or say when it would be introduced.

Some longtime observers of city education politics said the effort to pass legislation could largely be about generating pressure to ink a better deal for paras in the future, said David Bloomfield, a professor of education, law, and public policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center.

“It seems a distraction from the union’s failure to bargain for this small exception to the city’s preferred pattern of union wages,” he wrote in an email.

Still, Bloomfield acknowledged the union has won some major legislative victories, including a state law that requires significantly smaller class sizes in city schools.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NYC schools could lose nearly $350 million under Hochul’s funding proposal, chancellor says

2025-01-29T23:33:14+00:00

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New York City schools stand to lose nearly $350 million under Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposed update to the state’s school funding formula, schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos said Wednesday at a budget hearing in Albany.

“There is no question that the Foundation Aid formula needs a revamp,” Aviles-Ramos said. “But the governor’s proposed changes to the formula would actually result in nearly $350 million fewer dollars to New York City public schools than we’d be entitled to under the current formula, disproportionately impacting our system compared to many other districts.”

In her executive budget earlier this month, Hochul proposed several changes to the states’ school funding formula, which if enacted would result in New York City losing out on potential funding. The governor’s proposed spending plan marked the start of budget negotiations with lawmakers, with a finalized budget due by the start of the next fiscal year, which begins in April.

First developed in 2007, the Foundation Aid formula, in some cases, relies on decades-old data to calculate student need in determining how much money to send school districts.

Though advocates and policymakers agree the formula is in dire need of updates, some remain divided over what changes the state should make.

For one change, Hochul called for replacing the 2000 Census poverty rate with the most recent Census Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates. She also proposed the formula stop using federal free- and reduced-price lunch eligibility as a basis for measuring student need, instead switching to broader “economically disadvantaged” student counts.

Though the latter of these changes could benefit the city, the former would result in a sizable hit to funding for local schools.

In her testimony, Aviles-Ramos urged lawmakers to update how the formula accounts for differing costs across regions and add a weight for students in temporary housing, among other potential changes that could offset the loss of potential funding for New York City’s schools.

“We need that additional money,” she said. “And most importantly, we cannot sustain a cut.”

NYC asks for more money to implement school cellphone ban

Aviles-Ramos also called on lawmakers to push for additional funding to support a proposed statewide school cellphone ban.

Implementation costs were among the sticking points that held up a citywide ban anticipated earlier this school year, and the chancellor argued that the $13.5 million Hochul earmarked in her proposed ban was insufficient to support schools across the state. Aviles-Ramos did not specify how much city schools might need.

Currently, schools across the five boroughs can make their own determinations over whether and how to restrict student cellphone use. Some schools opt to collect phones each morning, while others use cubbies or locking pouches to store devices throughout the school day.

On Wednesday, Aviles-Ramos told lawmakers that the last of these options was the most effective — allowing students to retain their devices throughout the day with options to access them if an emergency situation occurs. But she added that purchasing those pouches can be expensive for schools.

Yondr, one company that develops the locking pouches, previously told Chalkbeat that the pouches (along with additional equipment, training, and support) cost about $30 per student, though company officials noted they offered “volume discounts.”

“I didn’t have that kind of money,” Aviles-Ramos said of her time as a school principal. Instead, the schools chancellor said her school collected cellphones each day from roughly 400 students. “So when I had an emergency and I needed to evacuate, I needed to get 400 cellphones back into the hands of high school students. That was very, very challenging.”

Aviles-Ramos added schools that have already implemented cellphone bans should benefit from the state funding.

“Roughly 800 of our schools have already signed up to do this work,” she said. “What we don’t want to tell them is, ‘Continue to self-fund while we pay for other schools to get on the bus,’ particularly if the Foundation Aid formula does not adjust and there’s going to be a decrease in the funding that they get.”

State lawmakers voice concerns over compliance with class size law, Trump administration

During the hearing, state lawmakers also voiced concerns over a range of issues impacting the city’s public school system, including its efforts to comply with a state law mandating smaller class sizes and the safety of immigrant communities amid President Donald Trump’s escalating deportation efforts.

State Sen. John Liu, a Queens Democrat who chairs the Senate’s New York City education committee, argued the city has not taken sufficient steps to shrink class sizes in the city. Though the city has thus far remained in compliance with the law without requiring dramatic measures, the first significant test comes in September when 60% of classrooms across the city must fall below the caps.

“The reality is that the department has done virtually nothing to achieve that,” Liu said.

Aviles-Ramos and other city officials pushed back on Liu’s statement, arguing that the city has given schools a chance to propose their own plans for meeting the class size mandate. The Education Department offered new funding to campuses that submitted concrete plans last month to shrink classes.

“That is incredibly important, Senator, because we know that when we give principals the autonomy to make the program shifts and the space shifts necessary to comply, it’s better than us swooping in and doing those mandates,” she said.

Several lawmakers also expressed concerns over the safety of immigrant students in New York City, as the Trump administration has rolled back long-standing protections that treated schools and child care centers as “sensitive locations” largely shielded from immigration enforcement.

Aviles-Ramos told lawmakers that school attendance after Trump’s inauguration was between 84-89%, compared to 89-92% for the same week in 2024 — a downward trend that may have been spurred in part by fears from immigrant families. She added that city policy prevents law enforcement from entering school buildings without a warrant, and that the Education Department had hosted training sessions for school officials and families.

“What if they have a judicial warrant?” asked Assemblymember Marcela Mitaynes, who added that constituents in her south Brooklyn district have expressed deep concerns over the possibility of federal immigration agents entering the community.

“Then, unfortunately, they are permitted to enter,” Aviles-Ramos said.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

For statewide school cellphone ban, Hochul proposes $13.5 million to cover costs

2025-01-21T23:02:04+00:00

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It’s official: After months of voicing concerns about the effects of cellphones on student mental health and learning, Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed a $13.5 million plan to help districts implement a ban.

Hochul said her plan would help create a “distraction-free” learning environment during the school day. The money aims to help cover associated costs that districts might incur, such as paying for digital pouches that lock devices or additional staff to collect phones each day. Covering the potential costs was one of the issues that forced New York City to put the brakes on its own ban, and it remains to be seen how far the governor’s proposed allocation will go.

On Tuesday, Hochul included the proposal in her $252 billion state 2026 budget, which would send $37.4 billion to schools across the state — a nearly $1.7 billion increase, or 4.7%, from the prior year’s budget. It builds on a broader agenda focused on affordability outlined by Hochul during her State of the State address last week.

The governor’s budget proposal marks the start of negotiations with lawmakers over how the state should allocate its funding for the next fiscal year, which begins in April.

Under Hochul’s cellphone proposal, students would be required to disconnect from devices from “bell to bell,” including during class time, lunch, and in the hallways. The policy would go into effect at the start of the next school year, with districts able to decide the specifics of how they would store phones and ensure compliance, according to Hochul’s office.

“Our kids will finally be free from the endless disruptions of social media and all the mental health pressures that come from it,” she said during her speech at the State Capitol.

Students with disabilities, as well as others who rely on digital devices for medical reasons or translation purposes, would be allowed exemptions from the policy.

In New York City, the Education Department appeared poised to implement a citywide ban on student cellphone use in schools last summer but later reversed course after intervention by Mayor Eric Adams.

Jenna Lyle, a spokesperson for the Education Department, said Tuesday that the department was “looking forward to partnering with the Governor” on the issue.

“The feedback we have heard from our school communities has been clear: access to cell phones in the classroom distracts from learning, divides attention, and significantly impacts our students’ mental health,” she said in a statement. “Following our engagement with parent leadership groups last spring, in partnership with the Health Department, we’ve been working on an evaluation to better understand both how schools are implementing policies to restrict cell phones, and lessons learned from those implementations.”

Currently, the city’s schools can make their own determinations over whether and how to restrict student cellphone use. At the end of last school year, about 350 schools already had bans in place, with an additional 500 planning to implement them this year, city officials previously said. Some schools provide students with locking Yondr pouches, while others collect phones or employ alternative strategies.

Those pouches (along with additional equipment, training, and support), though, can cost schools $30 per student in the first year, according to the company. Yondr CEO Graham Dugoni noted the company offered “volume discounts” in a statement and praised Hochul’s proposed cellphone ban.

“We look forward to supporting more school communities across New York in creating successful phone-free learning environments,” he said.

Adams, who has expressed some concerns about adopting a citywide policy on the issue, previously told reporters that the city would comply with any state mandate.

NYC could lose out under school funding formula proposal

Hochul’s proposed budget also called for updates to the state’s school funding formula, an issue expected to take center stage in education budget discussions this year. Known as Foundation Aid, the formula was originally created in 2007, and in some cases relies on decades-old data to determine how much funding is sent to school districts.

For years, advocates, lawmakers, and other education officials have called for updates to the formula, with some arguing it requires a complete overhaul. But the governor’s proposed updates — which were among the suggestions put forward by the state’s Board of Regents and a recent report issued by the Rockefeller Institute — could potentially result in New York City receiving a smaller funding increase, advocates warned Tuesday.

For one change, Hochul called for replacing the 2000 Census poverty rate with the most recent Census Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates, or SAIPE, data. The formula should also stop using federal free- and reduced-price lunch eligibility as a basis for measuring student need, the governor said, instead switching to broader “economically disadvantaged” student counts.

“This will ensure that state dollars go to students who need them the most,” Hochul said.

But according to the more than 300-page report issued by the Rockefeller Institute last month, switching from the 2000 Census Bureau poverty count to three-year average SAIPE data would decrease New York City’s Foundation Aid funding by a projected $392 million. (The city’s schools would still see an overall increase to Foundation Aid funding.)

Kim Sweet, executive director of the nonprofit group Advocates for Children of New York, said even when combined with the swap to using economically disadvantaged student counts, the proposed changes would result in less overall funding for New York City schools.

“The current federal poverty threshold for a family of four is just $32,150,” she said in a statement. “Trying to make ends meet on $30,000 means something very different for a family in New York City than elsewhere in the State.”

Hochul’s proposal did not include several changes to the formula sought by city advocates and officials, such as additional funding for students in temporary housing, or extra dollars to implement the state’s class size mandate for New York City schools.

The city’s Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on how the proposed changes were expected to impact local schools.

The governor’s budget proposal would also modify the formula to send additional aid to low-wealth school districts, as well as ensure that every district receives an annual increase of at least 2%, state officials said. The proposed modifications would result in an increase to Foundation Aid of roughly $1.5 billion, or 5.9%, according to officials.

Early college funding, free school meals, and other proposals

Hochul’s other proposals included establishing a $64.6 million “College in High School Opportunity Fund,” allocating $340 million for universal free school meals, increases in funding for child care programs, and more.

The proposed “College in High School Opportunity Fund” would seek to build institutional support for the model, which provides high school students with a chance to take college courses and receive additional mentorship opportunities while earning their diplomas. Across the country and the state, the model has seen success at improving college matriculation rates and other measures of academic achievement among high school students.

As she unveiled her budget proposal, Hochul also addressed concerns about the “cloud of uncertainty” posed by President Donald Trump’s administration, as the president vowed to slash federal funding during his campaign.

“Changes at the federal level will create new challenges for our state,” Hochul said, warning Republicans could cut “critical funding streams for Medicaid, education, child care, utility assistance,” and more.

“Those who are hurt need to raise their voices, and direct that anger at Washington, and push their members of Congress to fight for them,” she said. “Because New York and other states will simply not be able to shoulder these costs on our own.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Eric Adams funds Summer Rising, but not $112 million for 3-K in preliminary budget

2025-01-16T23:50:05+00:00

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Last year, New York City officials ponied up hundreds of millions in city dollars to preserve education programs supported by billions in expiring federal COVID relief aid.

But in many cases, city officials committed to only a year of funding — leaving the programs’ fates up in the air once again during this year’s budget cycle.

On Thursday, Mayor Eric Adams gave his first indication of which of those programs he has prioritized keeping next year and which will be subject to budget negotiations with the City Council in the coming months.

In the preliminary budget he introduced Thursday, Adams preserved several big-ticket items, including $100 million in Education Department funding for Summer Rising, a free recreational and academic program that started during the pandemic and has attracted huge demand in recent years, though it has struggled with attendance.

Adams also pledged to continue Learning To Work, a $31 million initiative that funds counselors, social workers, and internship opportunities for students at risk of dropping out of high school.

But he did not renew funding for other major initiatives, including $112 million for 3-K, the city’s free preschool program for 3-year-olds. The preliminary budget also didn’t extend $55 million to ensure preschoolers with disabilities are able to find spots in specialized programs and $25 million to pay for extended-day preschool seats.

“While we are pleased to see Mayor Adams extend funding for summer programming and Learning to Work for next year, we are concerned that there is still a slew of important education programs at risk of being rolled back or eliminated as soon as July,” wrote the Coalition for Equitable Education Funding, a group of more than 120 youth-focused organizations, in a response to the preliminary budget.

The city’s 3-K program has turned into a political football under the Adams administration. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio expanded the program significantly using one-time federal aid, and Adams has repeatedly sought to scale it back, citing unfilled seats in some parts of the city and a need to better match seats to demand.

But supporters of 3-K, including parent and child care advocacy groups and many members of the City Council, have contended that the city needs better outreach and enrollment practices to ensure seats are filled. In many parts of the city, moreover, there are more applicants than open seats.

As part of last year’s final budget deal, the city allocated $5 million to improve outreach and get more families to sign up for prekindergarten and 3-K. That money was also not restored in Adams’ preliminary budget. Enrollment in 3-K was around 41,300 students as of earlier this school year, up about 2,000 students from last year, according to preliminary Education Department data.

In addition to the preschool funding, a number of other education initiatives that the city funded last year were not included in the preliminary budget.

Those include $41 million for arts education, $14 million for community schools, which work with community-based organizations to bring additional services into schools, $12 million for restorative justice, an approach to student discipline that seeks to avoid punishments like suspensions, and $10 million for teacher recruitment.

The Education Department has said it will need to hire thousands of additional educators to comply with the state’s class size law — a large challenge.

City officials have previously pointed out that they were able to preserve more of the programs funded by expired federal COVID aid than other districts, despite significant challenges keeping those initiatives going when more than $7 billion in stimulus education money, spanning several years, dried up.

“We inherited an administration where we had real fiscal cliffs from COVID … so many of our youth programs,” Adams said during a Thursday press conference. He credited a conservative budgeting approach and cuts in previous years with enabling the city to restore some of those programs.

Adams’ preliminary budget also includes more than $200 million for this current fiscal year, which ends this summer, to maintain the city’s efforts to staff a school nurse in every school building. Funding for school nurses also expanded dramatically during the pandemic, thanks to federal aid.

There are some new education initiatives in the preliminary budget, too, including more money for Pathways, the Education Department’s initiative to expand career-focused education. The budget commits $15 million to help students develop “academic, work, and independent living skills,” and $4 million to expand financial education — efforts Adams previewed in his State of the City address last week .

Overall, the preliminary budget is more than $114 billion, and it doesn’t include the kinds of cuts Adams has proposed in previous years — a financial situation he attributed to lower-than-expected spending on migrants and improved revenue projections.

Adams will negotiate with the City Council in the coming months before the city reaches a final budget agreement by the end of June.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

School funding, cellphone ban, class size, Trump: Education issues Albany could tackle in 2025

2025-01-02T19:48:21+00:00

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Albany’s next legislative session kicks off this month with several key question marks for education policy.

On the state level, there’s an ongoing debate over how to update the school funding formula, which sends roughly $24.9 billion to school districts — including more than $9.5 billion to New York City schools. Meanwhile, as Donald Trump prepares for his second term as president, his education stance has some New Yorkers worried about the future of federal aid and other school-related policies.

And while both of these issues could hold major repercussions for New York City, many students and families might be paying closer attention to something else that could affect their day-to-day experiences: Gov. Kathy Hochul is eyeing statewide legislative action to restrict students’ cellphone access in schools.

Also on the horizon: Expect discussion about the city’s efforts to meet a state mandate capping class sizes, the continued fight over admissions to specialized high schools, and more.

Here’s a look at some of the biggest education issues lawmakers could tackle in 2025:

Albany considers restricting cellphone use in schools

For months, Hochul has remained deeply concerned over the impact of student cellphone use in schools. The governor has previously stated the devices should not be available to students during school hours, citing the harmful mental health effects of social media and other online platforms.

Hochul has signaled that she will look to implement a statewide policy during the next legislative session.

Though the city’s Education Department seemed poised to implement a citywide ban of its own over the summer, Mayor Eric Adams later pumped the brakes on that plan. At a press conference last month, Adams indicated the city would comply with a statewide mandate.

In Albany, lawmakers are awaiting the details of the governor’s proposal.

State Sen. Shelley Mayer, a Democrat who chairs the Senate’s general education committee, said there’s conceptual support in Albany for limiting student cell phone use. But she added, “We want these things to be determined at a local level, or at least to have input at a local level.”

David Bloomfield, a professor of education, law, and public policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, expects any statewide policy to leave decisions in the hands of school districts — potentially requiring that all school districts develop plans to address cellphone use, but stopping short of dictating how those plans work.

“I fully expect the Adams administration to do what it has been doing, which is to say, in turn, schools should come up with their own plans,” he said.

Debate over how to update NY’s school funding formula continues

Lawmakers and observers expect discussions over how to revise the Foundation Aid formula to play a major role in the state budget process.

That formula, first implemented in 2007, relies on decades-old data to calculate district needs, such as using poverty figures from the 2000 census. Though most agree the formula is in dire need of updates, a recent report offering 20 recommendations spurred mixed reactions among advocates and lawmakers.

State Sen. John Liu, a Queens Democrat who chairs the Senate’s New York City education committee, said the report included helpful suggestions. Still, it didn’t address several key issues that impact New York City, like the growing population of students in temporary housing, he said.

“The report gives us good ideas and some of the logic behind possible changes,” Liu said. “But it doesn’t constrain us in any way in terms of determining what the new state budget is going to be and how much will be invested in education.”

Mayer said discussions over the formula will begin with the release of the governor’s budget proposal later this month. She added that lawmakers will want to see the district-level impacts of any proposed changes to the formula.

Trump’s return sparks fears about funding cuts

In New York City and in Albany, Trump’s return to the White House has set lawmakers and education advocates on edge — as his policies could potentially weaken federal support for schools and harm local immigrant communities.

The president-elect has vowed to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education, enact mass deportations, and slash federal funding.

Bloomfield believes the biggest threat to New York City schools lies in potential federal funding cuts — whether directly related to education or not.

“Education funding directly could be cut,” he said. “But if transportation funding is cut, or other areas of massive federal aid, the budget may have to adjust away from education to fill other gaps.”

NeQuan McLean, president of the city’s District 16 Community Education Council, has been working to raise alarm over potential cuts to Title I funding, which provide city schools with millions in federal dollars meant to support students from low-income backgrounds.

Part of the issue, McLean added, is a lack of accounting of what city schools use the federal funding for — meaning the full extent of potential cuts remains unclear.

“What does that mean for New York State?” he said. “What does that look like for districts that really rely on this money?”

Mayer is concerned about the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — widely seen as a blueprint for the Trump administration — that calls for Title I funding to be turned into vouchers and then phased out over time, among other changes.

“We have Republicans from New York, and we have to impress upon them that to carry through with the Project 2025 agenda would be absolutely devastating for the kids of New York City,” she said.

Mayer added she’s concerned about the Trump administration’s plans to ramp up deportations. It’s a fear shared among local families and educators, as New York City’s schools are home to thousands of asylum-seeking and other migrant students.

“In the first Trump presidency, some of these parents just said, ‘I’m not willing to take the chance of ICE coming and pulling my kid at school,’” Mayer said. “We as a community need to assure parents that school is a safe place.”

NYC must construct more school buildings, lawmaker says

New York City is approaching its first major test in meeting a state law mandating smaller class sizes, with 60% of classrooms required to be in compliance by September 2025.

That law — which caps class sizes at 20 for kindergarten to third grade, 23 for fourth to eighth grade, and 25 for high school — will require a historic reduction in class sizes across the school system. Around 40% of the city’s classes were below the caps as of last year.

Liu said he’s open to conversations with the city about providing further resources. But he wants to see a more substantial effort by the city in 2025 toward meeting the mandate — including retrofitting additional school building spaces into classrooms, constructing additional classrooms where space exists on school campuses, and developing new school buildings.

Mayoral control, SHSAT, and other issues could resurface

Other issues that have previously taken center stage could also reemerge in 2025.

Though the current mayoral control deal will last until 2026, the city’s polarizing school governance structure could spark some conversations this year.

Liu said that legislative action about the issue was “always a possibility.”

To Bloomfield, recent federal charges against Adams and the departure of many top city officials may offer further fuel to critics of the current system.

Meanwhile, he anticipates debates over the Specialized High School Admissions Test — a standardized exam that acts as the sole metric of admission to the city’s prestigious specialized high schools, like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science — could resurface this year.

It’s a polarizing issue that has remained dormant in recent years. But as the city’s Panel for Educational Policy considered a new contract for a computer-based version of the exam last month, some members signaled they want to see reforms to the admissions system.

“It resurrects a previously dead issue,” Bloomfield said. “It’s unlikely to change things, but there’s an opening that didn’t exist a month ago.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

NYC is offering schools money to meet class size mandate. Principals ponder the tradeoffs.

2024-12-11T23:05:16+00:00

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As New York City faces a looming deadline to sharply reduce class sizes, officials are dangling a tantalizing carrot to nudge schools to come up with their own plans to achieve that goal: more money.

Though school budgets are largely based on student enrollment, the Education Department is promising new funding next year to campuses that submit concrete plans to shrink classes. How much is available and where it will come from, however, remains unclear, and principals across the city have mixed feelings about whether to submit applications for the funds by the Dec. 20 deadline.

Some school leaders say that applying for money to hire more teachers is a no-brainer. Others feel torn. Among their top concerns are whether they will be able to find quality teachers amid a hiring frenzy — and how long the money will last, according to interviews with five principals.

City officials have emphasized that the program is optional, giving schools leeway to come up with strategies that work for their campuses with input from parent leaders and staff. The Education Department hopes the voluntary program will help ensure that 60% of the city’s classrooms align with the new caps by September 2025, a requirement under state law. About 46% of classes are already in compliance, and all classrooms must meet the new caps by 2028.

Under the law, classes are generally limited to 20 to 25 students depending on the grade level, with performing arts and physical education classes allowed up to 40. That’s a sharp reduction from previous rules that generally capped classes at 30 to 34 students.

Teachers union President Michael Mulgrew, who lobbied for the class size law, supports the department’s effort to allow individual schools to craft class size reduction proposals, even as he has criticized the city for being slow to come up with a broader plan.

“We want to send a clear signal that this is money outside of your regular budget that will come directly to your school,” Mulgrew said in an interview, adding that the program “will entice a lot of principals.”

He emphasized that schools can submit plans that bring only some of their classrooms into compliance. The teachers union, principals union, and Education Department are each part of a committee that will decide which proposals receive funding.

But even as city officials promise the money “will recur” beyond next year, principals wonder whether it will eventually come out of their own budgets.

“You could say, ‘Give me $400,000′ and hire four teachers, and the next year they could say, ‘We can’t fund this anymore,’” said a high school principal who oversees a campus where more than half the classes don’t meet the new caps. By volunteering to shrink classes early on, the principal worries that the school may face pressure more quickly to shift funding to teacher hiring.

“Counselors, after-school programs, those types of things are all going to be on the chopping block in order for us to get anywhere near full compliance,” said the principal, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Still, the school is leaning toward applying. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” the principal said. “But I just can’t see not trying for it.”

Evan Schwartz, principal of Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical Education High School in the Bronx, said he plans to submit a proposal to hire four more teachers, as roughly a third of his classes are above the new caps.

“If you want me to hit those class sizes next year, there’s no way I’m going to be able to do that with the current budget,” he said.

Schwartz also noted that the money could help ease a different problem: He owes the Education Department about $180,000 because his school’s enrollment was lower than projected last year, and the city is forcing him to repay the balance. Officials are not applying that midyear adjustment policy to schools with lower-than-projected enrollment this school year, but that won’t help Schwartz, since the unexpected enrollment dip at his school occurred last year.

“That just seems extremely unfair,” he said. “Schools that had a registration loss this year got to keep their money.”

Hiring teachers may prove challenging

Although research generally suggests that smaller class sizes benefit students, some principals worry that the advantages might be undercut as they struggle to find quality educators.

“Hiring teachers gets harder and harder each year,” said one Brooklyn elementary school principal. “It’s not like you open a classroom and automatically have a great teacher.”

The principal, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retribution, said the school hopes to open a new kindergarten class because some of the other kindergarten sections are just above the new caps. But filling that class may be challenging, a prospect that raises concerns about how the school will afford the extra teacher in the long run.

Plus, the principal is concerned that applying for the additional money will invite city officials to second guess the school’s funding priorities.

The lengthy application to apply for the new funding requires schools to spell out all of the avenues the school is using to shrink classes, such as using virtual learning, rejiggering teacher schedules, and shifting funding from other areas, according to a copy reviewed by Chalkbeat.

“I’m worried the DOE is going to start to micromanage and scrutinize the way money is being spent,” said the principal, who cited potential pressure to reduce spending on teacher training or supplies.

Education Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle stressed that schools are not required to cut any student services to be eligible for the class size funding and noted the goal is to meet each campus’ needs. Hundreds of schools have started the application process, she said.

“Over the past couple of years, we have heard time and again that this process will look different in different communities,” Lyle wrote in an email. “By allowing schools to tailor their plans based on their specific needs and interests, we’re aiming to create a sustainable model for continuous improvement.”

Advocates call for a broader plan

Some advocates say the city needs to quickly come up with a more systematic plan beyond allowing principals to voluntarily apply for money. More than 500 schools don’t have enough space in their building for smaller classes, officials have said, and new construction takes years.

The city has so far avoided pursuing more contentious strategies, such as capping enrollment at in-demand schools and sending students to campuses with empty seats. And officials have yet to spin up a process that will eventually grant waivers to schools that can’t immediately meet the new caps. They are continuing to hammer out the details with the teachers and principals unions, officials said.

Class Size Matters, an advocacy group that pushes to shrink classes, has circulated a petition calling on the city to quickly establish a plan for reaching full compliance with the class size caps, including capping enrollment at some schools and spinning up construction projects.

“The DOE should develop an actual multi-year class size plan, demonstrating how sufficient funding and space will be provided over the next three years to allow all NYC students to benefit from the smaller classes they need and deserve,” the petition states.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

From school funding to grad requirements: What NY education officials want in the next state budget

2024-12-09T22:30:56+00:00

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Updates to New York’s main school funding formula. Seed money to start making changes to high school graduation requirements. A study on gaps in arts education across the state.

Those were some of the priorities outlined Monday by the Board of Regents in its annual budget proposal. The blueprint called for a roughly $2 billion increase in state aid for the 2025-26 school year, among other investments. That proposal would see the state provide New York schools with about $37.6 billion.

The proposal comes just a month before lawmakers return to Albany for the next legislative session, offering a set of budget recommendations to Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state legislature.

Hochul is expected to issue her own budget proposal in January, and will ask lawmakers to approve a 2025-26 fiscal budget later in the spring.

For years, state education officials have sought to revamp New York’s high school graduation requirements. For example, students will no longer be required to pass Regents exams to earn a diploma beginning in the 2027-28 school year, according to a proposed timeline from state officials.

This effort to overhaul graduation requirements would receive $2.3 million under the Regents’ proposal, state officials said Monday.

Meanwhile, the state formula that sends roughly $24.9 billion to school districts — including more than $9.5 billion to New York City schools — relies on decades-old data to calculate district needs. Known as Foundation Aid and first implemented in 2007, it’s been repeatedly criticized by education advocates, state officials, and others.

The Regents’ suggestions for updating the formula come just one week after the Rockefeller Institute of Government, a public policy think tank based at SUNY, issued a more than 300-page report on Foundation Aid. That report, which was commissioned as part of a budget agreement between state lawmakers and Hochul earlier this year, included a set of 20 recommendations for how to update the formula.

State education officials noted Monday they were still assessing the implications of the report’s recommendations, noting the Rockefeller Institute did not produce models to demonstrate the potential impacts of its suggestions.

“Recommendations are just that: recommendations,” said State Education Department Commissioner Betty Rosa. “It stops short of the modeling, and we’ve got to be crystal clear on this: The devil’s in the details of the modeling.”

Here’s a look at some of the Regents’ top education priorities for the 2025-26 school year.

State education officials want several Foundation Aid updates

The Regents called for policymakers to implement a set of initial updates to the Foundation Aid formula, which together would result in an additional more than $200 million for the state’s schools — with Foundation Aid overall increasing by about $1.6 billion from the prior year.

Those proposed updates include modernizing the data used to account for different regional costs and to calculate student poverty. (The former comes from 2006, while the latter is sourced from the 2000 census.)

Other tweaks proposed by the Regents would see the formula stop using federal free- and reduced-price lunch eligibility as a basis for measuring student need, instead switching to broader “economically disadvantaged” student counts. The Regents also suggested eliminating a limit on how much additional aid can be allocated to districts based on the formula’s Income Wealth Index.

Still, state education officials acknowledged further research is needed to develop more significant overhauls to the formula — as well as to understand the possible ramifications of the Rockefeller Institute’s recommendations. Officials from the state’s Education Department noted they would work to develop models demonstrating the impacts of those recommendations, adding they could do so without additional resources.

Money sought to implement new graduation mandates

State education officials also requested $2.3 million to support Education Department staff members who could begin the process of implementing a commission’s recommendations for updating high school graduation requirements.

Rosa described the budget item as “seed money” to support a “planning year,” adding further funding would be required later in the implementation process.

“We hope to come back to our legislators and our governor to say, ‘This is a huge initiative that will make a difference in the lives of our children, but we need investments and commitment,’” she said.

Last month, state officials said the Education Department plans to spend about $11.5 million for staff and other support within the department over the next five years to develop and roll out the new graduation measures.

Budget plan includes arts study, data infrastructure boost

At the Monday meeting, Regents and state education officials also discussed a proposal to commit $300,000 toward studying gaps in arts education.

Regent Roger Tilles of Nassau County said the study was “absolutely needed.”

“We’ve been derelict in not doing it for about 20 years,” he said. “There’s such a disparity in what districts and what students can get in terms of arts education.”

Other requests included $4.8 million to continue updating the state’s data infrastructure; $65.4 million to provide Free and Appropriate Education to students with disabilities until age 22; $16.9 million for programs that promote equity in access to higher education; and the development of a “growth aid” formula that would send additional support to districts experiencing rapid enrollment growth.

See a full description of the Regents’ legislative and budget priorities here.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Long-awaited report on updating NY school funding formula calls for ‘significant change’

2024-12-03T23:27:00+00:00

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New York’s school funding formula relies on outdated information and “reflects an antiquated concept of what public school districts are expected to do.”

That’s according to a more than 300-page report released this week by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, a public policy think tank based at SUNY. As part of the April budget agreement between Albany lawmakers and Gov. Kathy Hochul, the state charged the organization with issuing a set of recommendations to revise Foundation Aid, the formula that sends roughly $24.9 billion to school districts — including more than $9.5 billion to New York City schools.

First implemented in 2007, Foundation Aid uses decades-old data to calculate district needs, like relying on figures from the 2000 Census to measure student poverty. Other factors that impact district spending, including the number of students living in temporary housing, don’t weigh into the current formula at all. (Foundation Aid only received full funding from the state in recent years — following a lengthy fight from education advocates.)

Though the institute’s recommendations are not binding, its proposals could influence debates over how to update the formula when lawmakers return to Albany in January.

State Sen. Shelley Mayer, a Democrat who chairs the senate’s education committee, stressed that “any determinations about how to change the formula will rest with the Legislature and Governor.”

“The Rockefeller Institute’s report offers a set of recommendations –– some good, some concerning –– to begin a robust conversation about how to fix the Foundation Aid Formula,” Mayer said in a Tuesday statement. “Further, we are not limited by what is proposed in the Rockefeller Institute’s report.”

Read the Rockefeller Institute’s report here.

Recommendations: School funding formula needs ‘significant change’

In its report, the Rockefeller Institute called for “significant change” to the formula. Schools today provide far more services than when the formula was initially created, the organization noted, pointing to mental health support at school, language instruction for English learners, and a growing reliance on schools as a “community hub.”

The recommendations include modifying how the formula accounts for inflation, changing and updating the data used to determine student poverty, and establishing more nuanced calculations for funding based on students with disabilities, among other changes.

One of its suggestions is already getting pushback from some lawmakers and the governor: phasing out 50% of “save harmless,” or “hold harmless,” a policy that shields districts with declining enrollment from losing funding.

During the last budget cycle, Hochul sought to effectively end that provision, but the proposal was rebuffed by state lawmakers.

In a statement on Tuesday, a spokesperson for Hochul’s office distanced the governor from the Institute’s proposal to phase out the policy.

“As we craft the upcoming Executive Budget, the Governor believes we should avoid proposals that would negatively impact school budgets, such as eliminating the hold-harmless provision of the Foundation Aid formula,” the spokesperson said.

Reactions: Formula needs overhaul, not tweaks, some argue

Some observers worry that the institute’s proposals don’t go far enough to overhaul the formula, and fail to account for major issues impacting New York City schools.

Michael Rebell, executive director of the Center for Educational Equity at Columbia University’s Teachers College and the lawyer who led the landmark case against the state that paved the way for Foundation Aid, argues it isn’t enough to change aspects of the formula. He believes the state’s current approach falls short of its constitutional mandate to provide a “sound basic education.”

“We need a process that takes a totally new look at what students need in 2024 and 2025, not tweaking and patching up something that was written in 2006,” he said. “If you’re not looking at the overall impact of whether kids in every district are getting a fair shot — are getting the opportunity for sound basic education — what have you accomplished?”

Some advocates expressed mixed feelings about the report, noting it did not address several key concerns in New York City, including schools’ needs to help students in temporary housing. In New York City the number of students experiencing homelessness grew to more than 146,000 last school year.

“We are disappointed that there are no recommendations to add weights for students experiencing homelessness and students in foster care so that schools can better meet their needs; to provide per pupil funding for 3-K and pre-K students; or to help NYC meet the new class size limits required by state law,” said Kim Sweet, executive director of Advocates for Children, in a statement.

State Sen. John Liu, a Queens Democrat who chairs the Senate’s New York City education committee, echoed concerns about the report’s exclusion of the city’s class size reduction mandate.

“This absolutely must be considered to provide our school kids a constitutionally required, sound, basic education,” he said in a statement.

Impacts: How proposals could affect NYC schools remains unclear

It’s difficult to determine how the report’s proposals might impact students in a particular school district, because they cannot be considered in isolation from one another, Rebell said.

For example, a recommendation that the formula stop using federal free- and reduced-price lunch eligibility as a basis for measuring student poverty might result in less funding for New York City schools, he said. At the same time, a proposal to update how the formula accounts for differing costs between regions could mean more state funding for the city’s students.

And with the state under no obligation to adopt any or all of the Rockefeller Institute’s recommendations, it remains unclear what the report might mean for students.

“I can look at aspects of this formula and say, ‘This would help New York City. That would hurt New York City,’ but that’s not the way to do it,” Rebell said. “The way to do it is: What do kids in New York City need? What do kids in these rural districts need? How can we put together a package that’s responsive to all of it?”

The city’s Education Department and teachers union were both reviewing the report.

“We are continuing to review the report and the impacts of its proposals, and look forward to working with the Governor and the legislature moving forward,” Education Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle said in a statement.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said, “Some ideas sound promising. Others are cause for concern.”

He was focused, he said, “on what changes need to take place if we are to better support our city’s students, educators, and school communities.”

Looking ahead: Formula need regular updates, report says

Regardless of how state officials choose to update Foundation Aid, the Rockefeller Institute noted more regular revisions to the school funding formula are critical. The report noted student populations and needs, state learning standards, and other measures of academic achievement are all subject to change each year.

“Assuming state policymakers enact some of the recommendations quickly, they should not wait another 17 years to examine the Foundation Aid formula for additional needed revision,” the report said. “An essential part of this reform effort should be a commitment to revisit the Foundation Aid formula every three to five years.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

No midyear budget cuts for NYC schools, a return to pandemic-era policy

2024-11-27T19:11:51+00:00

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In a surprise move, New York City public schools that enrolled fewer students than projected will not see their budgets slashed midyear, the city’s Education Department announced Wednesday.

School funding is typically allocated to schools during the summer based on the city’s projections of how many students are expected to fill their seats. That funding is then adjusted during the school year as a clearer enrollment picture emerges.

Now, though, the decision to hold all schools harmless from midyear cuts means that those with lower-than-projected enrollment will be spared from potentially painful choices about where to allocate their more limited resources.

Meanwhile, schools that enrolled a higher number of students than anticipated will still see their budgets adjusted and receive additional funding, city officials said.

Enrollment was lower than projected at about half of the city’s more than 1,600 schools and higher than anticipated in the other half, Education Department officials said. The schools with lower enrollment will no longer lose out on $157 million dollars that would have otherwise been clawed back. The schools with expanded rosters are expected to receive about $146 million in additional funds.

Principals learned of the news in a Wednesday email from schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos, offering a breath of relief as schools finished class on the day before Thanksgiving break.

In a statement, Aviles-Ramos said ensuring school leaders had sufficient resources to support their students was her “top priority.”

“I am proud that in direct response to feedback from our school communities, schools will not only receive funding, but also personalized supports designed to help them make the most of this funding,” she said.

That support will range from one-on-one meetings to school budget reviews with budget directors from district offices, according to the Education Department.

The Wednesday announcement represents a return to a pandemic-era policy, when city officials were reluctant to cut budgets even as many schools lost students. Last year, schools faced midyear cuts for the first time in four years.

At the time, the policy change prompted some backlash from advocates, as schools continued to grapple with the lingering effects of the pandemic. But city officials argued the cuts were necessary amid the city’s bleaker financial picture and dwindling federal relief funds.

Though the city’s public schools saw overall enrollment remain steady this year, falling by just 0.1%, student populations still fluctuate from school to school.

And in recent years, the city has seen a growing number of small schools, as citywide enrollment has fallen by about 14%, or 130,000 students, since 2016. The number of schools with fewer than 200 students doubled in that same period, reaching 190 last year, according to a Chalkbeat analysis.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Rita Joseph, NYC Council’s ed committee chair, talks school budgets, curriculum mandates, and more

2024-11-11T20:55:08+00:00

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City Council member Rita Joseph, a former teacher who chairs the committee on education, hasn’t forgotten her roots in the city’s public school system.

Since taking office in 2022, the Brooklyn council member has visited nearly 100 schools across the five boroughs, Joseph recently told Chalkbeat. She holds monthly meetings with a coalition of advocates, as she’s sought to help the city’s schools navigate a contentious budget cycle in City Hall, an influx of asylum-seeking and other migrant students, and other major education challenges.

Her time as chair of the council’s education committee has also coincided with a period of major overhaul in the city’s public school curriculums. Former schools Chancellor David Banks mandated elementary schools adopt one of three approved literacy curriculums — the signature policy of his tenure — while also introducing curriculum overhauls for middle and high school math.

With another budget cycle on the horizon and a change in leadership at the city’s Education Department, Joseph has her eyes set on a number of key priorities, including securing more permanent funding for programs that previously relied on federal relief dollars, expanding the city’s early childhood education system, and improving transportation options for students.

Chalkbeat sat down with Joseph last month to talk about a range of issues facing the city’s public schools.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The City Council held a hearing in September on school bus services. What were your takeaways from that hearing? What stood out to you?

Two years later, we’re still in the very same spot: Kids not having routes, kids are not being picked up on time, students that are medically fragile still don’t have traveling nurses.

And also, the students with IEPs [individualized education programs] who are medically fragile have to be on the bus for a certain amount of time, and we’re finding they’re still on the bus for two hours, when they’re supposed to be on the bus for an hour.

On the budget, last year was a big year — expiring stimulus funding and budget cuts. Obviously, a lot of that was restored, but looking back on it, how do you assess how much of your priorities you got?

I got everything. But I could never do this work by myself. I meet with advocates once a month. We even created a group called the Emergency Coalition to Save Education Programs, and that included advocates, parents, not-for-profit organizations, and labor. We got together, and we went on a five borough tour to listen to the parents, the families: If this was to be cut, what is the impact?

I remember going to the Bronx and Learning to Work, [a paid work program for students at alternative high schools,] resonated with me because I was meeting these young people. They came to testify. They came to say, ‘Let me tell you what this LTW has done for me. I’m not on the corner, Council member Joseph. I can help my mother. I can buy my own pair of sneakers.’

It’s giving a child that second chance at education.

Fairly late in the year, Mayor Adams noted he’d recently learned how many programs were funded by stimulus money. How were you able to get him on board with this?

We met with him in October 2023.

We sat down. I laid it out for him. I said, ‘This is what’s on the line.’

I called him out on every cut, from lunch to community schools, [which partner with nonprofits to provide wraparound support for students].

Hold harmless, [a policy to preserve school budgets despite enrollment drops,] was also very important for me. I told him, ‘That’s one way to stabilize, versus them bleeding out. We know we’re losing students, but we have to hold schools harmless.’

In the next budget, is hold harmless something you will continue to fight for?

I would have to look at the lay of the land first. I don’t think I would rush to that. I would assess what I have first, before I would make such a big decision.

Are there other big priorities that you have for the upcoming budget cycle?

I would like to baseline quite a few things. I would love to baseline the mental health continuum, LTW, student success centers [a peer-led program to promote college-readiness], and STH [students in temporary housing] coordinators — they play such an integral role for our students living in temporary housing.

Last year, the city’s Education Department and the United Federation of Teachers agreed to allow qualified teachers to switch to a bilingual license without losing their tenure. What do you make of this change?

I had to give up my tenure in order to switch over to an ESL license.

Now, UFT allows you to change your license and still retain your tenure. I wish they had that when I was there.

I gave it up because I knew there was a need. We were getting a lot of students from Chile at the time when I was at P.S. 6 [in Brooklyn]. We got a lot of students from Yemen as well. And when they were coming in, there was a shortage of ESL teachers in the building. So I went and took the course and got an extension to my license.

That is one piece of advice I gave to Chancellor Banks. You don’t need a new degree. Get an extension from your common branch license. It’s 15 credits, take the test, and you have an ESL extension that can be used across the city. That was one way to create the pipeline and make it easier for folks to become ESL coordinators and ESL teachers.

What are your general thoughts about the curriculum mandates?

[We need] more support for educators. No drive-thru professional development. There should be ongoing support, all year round.

New York City Reads — I like the concept that all students should be able to be on reading level by third grade, because that’s when you take your first city exam. So even by the end of second grade, you should already be meeting proficient.

When the reading scores came out, no one highlighted it — and I really want to sit with those superintendents — Districts 5, 7, and 16 [Harlem, South Bronx, and Bedford-Stuyvesant, respectively] did really well. I want to know, what were they doing over there? What were they doing differently? Those are Black and brown communities. What were the principals and the superintendent doing to support the educators and the students?

Same thing with math. We’ve got to make sure kids know their domain-specific vocabulary when it comes to math. There’s languages that go with these specific subjects. Teachers should master them. Principals should master them. And I think principals should also be part of that, because they evaluate teachers, right? So you’ve got to know what you’re evaluating your teachers on.

And reading should not be punishment. Reading should be joy.

I’m a big fan of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. I have every collection, every single book that came out. I even have one signed by Jeff Kinney. So you know, I was like the coolest teacher in the building for having one signed by the author.

Find what the kids like. If it’s fashion, or cooking, or whatever it is, make sure they’re reading for something they enjoy.

What are your impressions of the new schools chancellor, Melissa Aviles-Ramos?

I’m a fan. I like her. I like her work. Because we come from the same. Teacher, principal, assistant principal, acting superintendent. She knows the lay of the land. She knows how to navigate this space. And she’s like me, she’s a worker.

We’re here to support her. She has an ally.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

‘Backbone of New York City’: Arts groups showcase their work to schools, as funding concerns remain

2024-10-23T20:31:12+00:00

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Dozens of cultural arts organizations flocked to Lincoln Center on Tuesday, joining elected officials and educators for a celebration of arts education in the city’s schools — replete with a performance by dancers from the Juilliard School.

It was the second “Arts & Culture in the Schools Showcase,” held by Manhattan Council member Gale Brewer, aimed at promoting connections between local schools and cultural arts organizations.

The showcase comes at a time of heightened concern over the state of the city’s arts education.

In recent years, students, advocates, and elected officials have pushed for the city to provide more funding for arts programming in schools. Meanwhile, critics of a state law mandating smaller class sizes have argued it could push schools to convert dance, music, and art studios into classrooms — as the city works to bring tens of thousands of classrooms below the legal limit over the next few years.

And though City Council members reached a budget agreement with Mayor Eric Adams last year that restored more than $40 million in arts education funding that was previously propped up by expiring federal relief dollars — in addition to more than $50 million to cultural institutions — city data shows stubborn gaps persisting in student access to arts education.

“Nobody needs more money than schools and the arts,” Brewer said at the Tuesday event. “Those are the backbone of New York City.”

Middle school students are required by the state’s Education Department to complete two or more semesters of arts instruction across two different disciplines taught by certified teachers by the time they enter high school. But many schools in New York City are failing to meet that requirement, with just 36% of local students doing so in the 2022-23 school year, according to a city report.

That represented a slight uptick from the year before, but still fell well below the state mandate.

Though a majority of public schools offered instruction in visual arts and music in the 2022-23 school year, less than half of the city’s middle and high schools offered dance and theater instruction — with figures falling to as low as 21% for high schools that taught dance. As of the same year, there were roughly 2,400 full-time certified arts teachers, as well as about 800 part-time teachers, employed across the public school system, according to city surveys.

“We’re going to continue to fight and push for more funding,” said Laurie Cumbo, commissioner of the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs. “We want to see art teachers in every single school in New York City. That’s really the ultimate goal.”

More than 50 nonprofit arts organizations attended the Tuesday showcase, ranging from music to performing and visual arts to computer programming. Citywide, more than 600 cultural arts organizations partnered with public schools in the 2022-23 school year, with a majority of those partnerships occurring in elementary schools, according to a city report.

Jada Foster, the program manager of Lambda Literary’s LGBTQ Writers in Schools program, said her organization has facilitated local school visits from a range of LGBTQ authors, including Roya Marsh, Mark Oshiro, and Maulik Pancholy.

The program has partnered with roughly 180 schools across the five boroughs, running writing workshops for K-12 students and providing a safe space for students to discuss books that address issues of homophobia, racism, sexism, and more. It’s a program that’s become especially important in the wake of book challenges in schools and libraries across the country, which have largely targeted stories written by LGBTQ authors, she said.

“We always want to invite educators in, and encourage educators who want that inclusive curriculum to apply to our program,” Foster said. “With the rise of book bannings, this is a program that will provide students that necessary space.”

Lulu Fogarty, the director of education at Symphony Space, said the cultural education organization has partnered with schools for roughly 40 years, educating students from prekindergarten through high school on traditional cultural art forms.

“If a school is studying Latin America, for instance, we have a series where we’ll send in a group that does folk dances from Mexico, there’s going to be a samba music from Brazil class, there’s an Afro-Latin Jazz workshop, there’s a capoeira workshop,” she said. “Along with that series, there’s a field trip opportunity, so students can come to our theater at Symphony Space to see their teaching artists perform live on stage.”

Symphony Space partners with more than 50 schools in the city, serving about 15,000 students each year, Fogarty said.

Meanwhile, New York City Children’s Theater partners with both schools and shelters to help students adapt stories into theater performances, said Yvonne Roen, the organization’s director of development. The program invites students to participate in multiple languages, an aspect Roen said has been particularly helpful in recent years, as the city has seen an influx of asylum-seeking and other migrant students.

“When students are working together and building a play, they suddenly see something about a classmate that they’ve never seen before, because this person is speaking their own language — they’re having their own experience and that forms a bridging of the classroom,” she said. “It also gives students an opportunity to present themselves in a way that they don’t normally get to be in a classroom.”

Before the pandemic, NYCCT worked across more than 30 shelter sites in partnership with the city’s Education Department, said Frank Ruiz, the organization’s education program manager. But after losing funding in 2021, their work in shelters was limited to just two sites, Roen added.

Three years later, with funding cobbled together from City Council and various foundations, NYCCT has partnered with 11 shelters, in addition to more than 40 schools.

“As long as we get the funding, we’re going to keep expanding it, because it’s really important,” Roen said. “We really believe that everyone has a story to tell.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

NYC cracked down on private school special education costs. Hundreds of children lost services.

2024-09-19T20:01:46+00:00

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Days before her 9-year-old daughter started the school year, Suzette received crushing news about the girl’s special education services at her Bronx Catholic school.

For years, as part of its legal obligation to support students with disabilities in private and parochial schools, New York City’s Education Department had covered the cost of services for Suzette’s daughter, who is hearing impaired. That included a device to amplify her teacher’s voice in her hearing aid, speech therapy, and an aide to make sure she understands what’s happening during class.

But on Aug. 26, Suzette learned that the department had decided her daughter was no longer eligible for those services — not because she didn’t need them but because Suzette had missed a June 1 deadline to request them. The news left Suzette angry that her daughter was denied for what felt like a technicality, and facing a choice between letting the services lapse or paying out of pocket.

“I can’t imagine what this year is going to look like and how much further behind she’ll be for fifth grade without that extra support,” said Suzette, who asked that her last name be withheld to protect the family’s privacy.

In an effort to address ballooning costs and some cases of alleged fraud, the city’s Education Department recently stepped up enforcement of the June 1 deadline for special education services — one long enshrined in state law but loosely enforced — while simultaneously giving families less notice about the deadline than in past years. The Education Department sent families who missed the cutoff boilerplate notices that their students would not receive services, ranging from speech therapy to tutoring, for the rest of the school year.

The Education Department has already heard from roughly 1,300 families who missed the deadline but still want services, officials said.

The ramped up enforcement of the June 1 deadline is part of a larger crackdown on a system city officials say has run amok. In a separate policy shift over the summer, state officials passed an emergency regulation preventing private school families from bringing legal actions, called due process complaints, in certain special education cases.

But the crackdown has already denied critical services to kids who rely on them and could make it far more difficult for families to access support in the future, according to interviews with more than a dozen families, advocates, and legal experts.

John Farago, a hearing officer who has ruled on special education legal claims for decades, said the moves are deeply troubling.

“The city’s Education Department has now for this last year — in the most aggressive and vicious way I’ve seen in the more than 40 years I have been conducting hearings — tried to do everything they can to stop these children who attend private schools from getting special ed services at all,” he said.

Department officials say they are addressing urgent problems with the system. The cost of providing special education services for children in private schools has exploded, as have the number of legal complaints filed by those families. City lawyers also point to incidents of alleged fraud in which they believe providers have artificially inflated prices to bilk more money from the city, or failed to provide services for which they charged.

“We’re going to discover that there’s substantial fraud in this space.”
Education Department General Counsel Liz Vladeck

Last school year, the city received roughly 26,000 legal complaints related to special education, and it paid out $1.35 billion on those claims, officials said. That’s up from 6,000 cases and $189 million in payments a decade ago, officials said.

“It’s out of control,” said Education Department General Counsel Liz Vladeck in a recent interview.

A 2022 New York Times investigation found that growth in payments for services such as tutoring has been fueled in large part by the city’s Hasidic schools, called yeshivas. More than half of special education complaints in the 2021-22 school year came from neighborhoods in Brooklyn with the highest concentrations of such schools. The Times found that some agencies have been paid millions to provide services, but the services were not always needed or provided.

City officials said that tightening restrictions is the only way to get a better handle on the problem.

“At the end of the day, we’re going to discover that there’s substantial fraud in this space,” Vladeck said. “I think that there are more than a few bad actors.”

Advocates and families who spoke to Chalkbeat, however, said that the city’s blanket enforcement is denying critical services to families who did nothing wrong while failing to address the root causes of the rising costs.

“They’re using a hammer to kill a fly. It’s going to greatly harm children who need services,” said M’Ral Broodie-Stewart, a lawyer at Staten Island Legal Services.

City officials take aim at ballooning special education complaints

The crisis stems in part from the city’s obligation under an unusually expansive state law.

Under federal law, public school systems are required to pay for private school tuition and services for students with disabilities if they can’t provide an appropriate public option. But a New York State law passed in 2007 goes a step further: Students have an individual right to special education services even if they could be served in a public school. In those cases, parents are still on the hook to pay for private school tuition, but their children may receive therapies and tutoring paid for by the city.

Those services can take place at private schools, in students’ homes, or at separate centers.

While cases involving tuition reimbursement soak up a disproportionate share of the attention from politicians and the media, it’s the latter types of cases — where parents pay tuition but seek city-funded services — that have exploded in number and cost in recent years.

Of the more than 26,000 complaints filed last year, about two-thirds came from families whose kids could have been served in public schools. The city spent north of $500 million on those students last year, Vladeck estimated, noting the city has not historically tracked those costs separately.

City officials didn’t provide one single explanation for the boom in cases. But they described a strained system that has become costly, inefficient, and ripe for fraud.

One problem is that the city has nowhere near enough special education teachers to match with the private school students who need them as demand has grown, Vladeck said.

The city instead offers vouchers to families to find their own private special education teachers, issuing some 15,000 vouchers this year. Families have long complained that the vouchers don’t pay enough for most private providers, even after the city doubled its hourly rate last year, from around $42 to $86. In cases where providers charge more than the value of the voucher, or are unwilling to deal with a longer commute to a student’s neighborhood, families routinely file legal complaints to force the city to accept a different provider, often at a higher cost.

City officials contend their updated voucher offers a fair market rate, and they say that some providers are taking advantage of both the city and families by failing to provide promised services, or using unqualified teachers.

The current system has driven costs for the city far beyond what other districts spend and what federal law requires, and it raises questions about the state’s 2007 law, Vladeck argues.

“Is it the right thing to expect the school district to have 10,000 itinerant teachers that can be deployed?” Vladeck said. “What we’re looking at in terms of the demand here is not something that I think anybody ever envisioned.”

Disagreements over how to fix the system

Though there’s little disagreement that the current system is riddled with flaws, there are sharp disagreements about who’s to blame and how to fix it.

Education Department officials argue they’re obligated to act decisively to rein in costs and root out fraud. That’s why officials are enforcing the June 1 deadline, one of several steps they’re taking to vet requests for services.

The other major change, approved over the summer by the state’s Board of Regents, bars families from bringing due process complaints in cases where the city’s voucher didn’t cover the full cost of a special education teacher. Instead, the city has set up a new system run by the Education Department to resolve those cases – one Vladeck says will help the city quickly spot and shut down possible fraud.

“They’re using a hammer to kill a fly.”
M’Ral Broodie-Stewart, Staten Island Legal Services

But to many families and advocates, the city’s crackdown seems to punish families for problems for which the Education Department is ultimately responsible. After all, children have a right to the services, like the extra tutoring, in special education plans that the Education Department is responsible for crafting.

“You don’t fix documented incidents of abuse by attacking the children,” said Farago, the hearing officer. “You fix them by solving the underlying problem: You hire, or develop, a large cohort of [special education] teachers. You do what it takes to make sure that children receive the services you know they need.”

Some advocates are particularly concerned that the changes to the due process system will make it far harder for families to file complaints, and they are unsure how the new system set up by the city will work.

“The hearings will go down by 8,000 or 10,000 this year. That doesn’t mean that these kids no longer need the services,” said Jesse Cutler, a partner at Regina Skyer and Associates, a law firm that represents families in special education cases. “The DOE is able to wipe their hands clean.”

City officials said that families who have lodged requests for higher rates for special education teachers in the new city-run system will hear back within 60 days and have a right to appeal with the state.

Families caught in the city’s dragnet

Perhaps the most controversial, and consequential, of the Education Department’s recent changes was the decision to strictly enforce the June 1 deadline.

Suzette’s daughter, who depends on a listening device and help from an aide to make sure accommodations are in place for her hearing impairment, is suddenly without that help. The city has also stopped paying for her speech therapy sessions.

The Bronx family chose a Catholic school because of its quiet classrooms and strict discipline. A public school they considered seemed noisy by comparison, and Suzette feared her daughter might struggle to hear the teachers. Plus, Suzette said the local public schools she attended growing up felt dangerous, and she worried her daughter might face bullying due to her disability.

The city’s sudden enforcement of the June 1 deadline caught Suzette off guard. The Education Department used to automatically send notices informing families at private schools that they must request special education services by June 1, which prompted Suzette to send in the paperwork each year. But the city did not send similar notices this year — in yet another bid to reduce fraud.

“We’ve seen notarizations that are false or dated before the parent’s signature, or that purport to be from parents, but it’s the same handwriting on a few dozen of them,” Vladeck said.

But without the reminder to submit the paperwork, the requirement slipped Suzette’s mind. Just days before the school year started, the city informed her that her daughter was no longer eligible.

“I felt like that was malicious, that was intentional,” Suzette said. She noted that at her annual meeting with city Education Department staffers to renew her daughter’s services for this school year, which occurred on June 4, no one mentioned she’d missed the deadline.

Now, she’s in damage control mode. She is working to line up group speech therapy sessions that she’ll pay for out of pocket, at about $35 each. Her daughter’s learning plan entitles her to one-on-one services three times a week, though Suzette is unsure whether she’ll be able to afford it and is waiting for a quote on the cost.

“This whole thing does feel like a punishment,” she said.

Jennifer Varvara, whose 14-year-old has autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, said her teen’s services were similarly yanked for missing the deadline. Her son attends Monsignor Farrell High School in Staten Island and was supposed to receive speech and occupational therapy and tutoring.

“It seems like the city just decided to do this out of nowhere and not actually let anybody know, which is really a horrible thing to do,” Varvara said. “You’re preying on special needs kids who need these services for a reason.”

City officials have told families who missed the deadline that they are working to provide services once they’ve lined up support for families who met the June 1 cutoff, though it’s unclear when that might happen.

The Education Department has also offered families a different solution: enrolling in a public school.

Many families said that wasn’t a realistic option so close to the start of the school year. They were unlikely to get refunded for tuition they’d already paid, and they didn’t want to disrupt their child’s education.

Even some parents who say they met the June 1 deadline have struggled to get help.

Rosanna Gioia, a Staten Island mom, said she mailed in her annual request for services about a week before the deadline, but didn’t receive a confirmation. She dashed off an email on June 3 to double check.

Rosanna Gioia, whose 12-year-old daughter attends a Catholic school and was denied special education services just days before school started.

The next day, an Education Department rep confirmed the city received Gioia’s request for services, which includes counseling, speech therapy, and extra help from a special education teacher to help address her seventh grade daughter’s severe anxiety and selective mutism.

But on Aug. 28, in response to an inquiry from Gioia about counseling services, department officials said her daughter wouldn’t be eligible for any special education support.

A boilerplate email claimed she missed the deadline.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NY school funding formula needs an overhaul, more than 100 organizations urge

2024-09-16T10:01:00+00:00

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A coalition of more than 100 New York organizations is urging the state to overhaul its nearly two-decade-old school funding formula.

The organizations, which previously joined forces to raise alarm over school programs that were put at-risk by the expiration of billions of dollars of federal pandemic stimulus funds, are now turning their attention to the state’s Foundation Aid formula.

In a joint statement, issued on Monday, they called for a revision to how the formula accounts for student poverty, added funding for students in temporary housing and the foster care system, increased support for students with disabilities and English language learners, and new funds for preschool students, as well as extra money to implement the state’s class size mandate for New York City schools, among other changes.

First implemented in 2007, the state’s formula is no longer sufficient to meet student needs, many education experts and politicians agree. As part of a state budget agreement earlier this year, the Rockefeller Institute is conducting a study on how to revise the formula, which sends roughly $24.9 billion to school districts — including more than $9.5 billion to New York City schools.

Though Foundation Aid just recently received full funding for the first time, it relies on decades-old data to calculate some metrics of district needs. Other factors, such as the number of students living in temporary housing, don’t weigh into the current formula at all.

“Gov. Hochul and the state legislature deserve a lot of credit for fully funding Foundation Aid,” said Randi Levine, policy director of the nonprofit group Advocates for Children, one of the organizations that signed onto the statement. “But the formula was developed more than 15 years ago … and doesn’t address the current needs of students and schools. We think the time has come to make changes to this outdated formula and ensure it reflects the needs of today’s students and schools, with particular attention to students who need the most support.”

Some question state’s approach to updating school funding formula

Advocates have also called for the state to overhaul the base model the formula uses to determine funding, arguing it isn’t responsive to the needs of large, urban districts like New York City. Known as the “successful school district model,” the base of the formula is currently calculated using the average per-pupil funding from a subset of school districts that perform well on standardized state exams.

As part of its study, the Rockefeller Institute held a series of public hearings over the summer to solicit testimony on the current formula, and has been tasked with issuing recommendations by Dec. 1.

But some have raised concerns over the state’s current approach to updating the formula, noting the Rockefeller Institute’s recommendations are not binding, and the budget agreement tasked the institute with developing a formula that is “fiscally sustainable for the state, local taxpayers, and school districts.”

“The key question should not be what is fiscally sustainable, but what our schools and students need to get a high quality education today,” Levine said. “This process could have major implications for students and schools in New York City and around the state, and it is essential that we get it right.”

Arlen Benjamin-Gomez, executive director of EdTrust-New York, added that the Rockefeller Institute has been given just months to conduct its study and issue recommendations.

“We are really concerned about the aggressive timeline, and that the stakeholder engagement was done at a time when folks just aren’t around,” she said. “I went to the New York City hearing and testified in front of a big, empty high school auditorium, because it was the middle of summer.”

During the last budget cycle, Hochul also introduced a tweak that adjusted how the formula accounts for inflation. That change led to the city missing out on roughly $120 million, though total state funding still increased for the year, according to city officials.

Though the city and state contributed roughly equal funding to New York City schools in the 2001-02 school year, advocates and city officials have noted that balance has shifted significantly in the two decades since. Today, the state contributes just over a third of the Education Department’s budget — meaning the city is shouldering a greater share of education spending, as overall costs have risen significantly over time.

Some of the changes the organizations are calling for echo suggestions voiced by the city’s Education Department. During the July hearing in Manhattan, schools Chancellor David Banks said the state should work to create a “more effective and equitable” school funding formula.

“Even with full funding, the Foundation Aid that we’re receiving has not kept pace,” Banks said, citing new challenges facing the city’s schools — including an influx of migrant students and expanded costs associated with services added over the past two decades, like 3-K and pre-K. “It is not nearly enough to support our students in the educational experience that they deserve.”

He called on the state to review the successful school district model, and to implement four specific changes: Providing funds for students in temporary housing and the foster care system, increasing weights for students with disabilities, updating regional cost calculations, and designating dollars to support the implementation of the state’s class size mandate.

Concerns over the formula are not unique to New York City, according to Marina Marcou-O’Malley, co-executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education, another group that signed onto the Monday statement.

“The same concerns exist in every school district in the state that we have talked to,” she said.

Marcou-O’Malley noted she was alarmed during last year’s budget cycle to see the governor discussing changes that would result in some districts receiving less funding, despite Hochul continuing to point to her administration fully funding Foundation Aid.

“You can’t have it both ways,” she said. “You’re either going to fully invest in education and sustain that, or you’re going to be cutting education.”

In total, more than 110 organizations signed onto the Monday statement calling for the formula to be overhauled.

“It’s rare in education that so many folks are so aligned,” Benjamin-Gomez said. “Everybody agrees that this formula is outdated and needs to be updated.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

A tech firm ditched a power lobbyist — and called on the schools chancellor’s brother

2024-09-09T19:59:11+00:00

This story was originally published on Sept. 9 by THE CITY. Sign up here to get the latest stories from THE CITY delivered to you each morning.

In late 2022 a Florida-based tech firm called Saferwatch saw a potentially lucrative opportunity in New York City: selling “panic button” apps for the city’s public schools to use in emergencies such as fires or active shooters. To approach key officials, including Schools Chancellor David Banks and Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Philip Banks III, they hired Corey Johnson, the former City Council Speaker turned lobbyist.

But a year later, Johnson had made little headway, with Saferwatch in just five schools as part of a pilot program, and the company ditched Johnson as their representative. Around the same time, they turned to another firm that advertises “government relations,” the Pearl Alliance, owned and operated by David and Phil’s brother, Terence Banks.

The city’s ethics rules prohibit lobbying family members. But Terence Banks did not register as a lobbyist with the city clerk, as required of anyone doing more than $5,000 in business. Instead he operates a consulting firm called Pearl Alliance that provides “government relations” to private sector clients to bridge “a key gap between New York’s intricate infrastructure and political landscape.”

Last week all three Banks brothers — Terence, Philip and David — found themselves the subjects of search warrants from federal authorities, who seized their electronic devices in a newly emerging investigation of the Adams administration.

The specific nature of the inquiry by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams into the activities of the Banks brothers is not yet known, but a connection between Terence’s work and his brothers’ as top advisors to the mayor is emerging in city and state records. The Daily News first identified firms Terence Banks’ website advertised as clients, which also include SVAM International, Derive Technologies and Mercato Inc.

When Adams arrived at City Hall in January 2022, the mayor had appointed both David and Philip to prominent posts on his team. Adams had a longstanding relationship with Philip Banks dating to their days as fellow cops in the NYPD, and in his role as deputy mayor Philip has come to play a major role in increasing the use of technology to heighten public safety. David Banks, meanwhile, arrived as schools chancellor following a high-profile track record in public education, having formed the Eagle Academy network of schools primarily serving boys of color.

Terence Banks did not make it on to Adams’ team. He remained in his job as a mid-level supervisor at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) with decades of service at the agency and zero experience as a lobbyist. But he’d made his support for the mayor clear, having organized three fundraisers for Adams during the mayoral campaign, including one co-hosted by his brothers. All told, he raised nearly $48,000 for Adams.

That July, while still employed by the MTA, Terence Banks incorporated the Pearl Alliance. The firm’s intention was to provide clients with “government and community relations” and offer advice for minority-owned companies seeking governmental work. He retired from the MTA eight months later, and the website for the Pearl Alliance went live in July 2023.

It’s not clear precisely when Saferwatch became one of Terrence Banks’ clients. By late 2022 the Florida-based firm was already trying to procure work in New York via former Speaker-turned-lobbyist Johnson, to sell its “panic button” app to the City of New York.

Over the next few months, Johnson targeted both Banks brothers on Saferwatch’s behalf, records show.

Chancellor Banks’ schedule reports a half-hour meeting between the chancellor and Johnson to discuss Saferwatch on December 7, 2022. January and February 2023 lobbyist records show Johnson listing Justin Meyers, chief of staff to Phil Banks, as an intended subject of lobbying on behalf of Saferwatch, pitching the idea of getting NYPD school safety officers to employ the app.

At first it seemed like he was making progress. In October 2023, the head of the NYPD’s school safety unit, Kevin Taylor, told a City Council hearing that the unit was testing out the Saferwatch app in a pilot program at five schools, and that the department’s intention was to expand the program citywide.

But by early 2024 Johnson had ceased representing Saferwatch, records show. As of July, Saferwatch was a client of Terence Banks, according to an archived screenshot of the Pearl Alliance website.

In an interview, Johnson said that at no time did he communicate with Terence Banks about Saferwatch, and that he wasn’t aware the company was a client claimed by Pearl Alliance until late last week, after the FBI had taken the electronic devices of all three Banks brothers.

THE CITY attempted to contact David Banks, Philip Banks and Terence Banks about the Saferwatch lobbying and has not received a response.

A spokesperson for the Department of Education did not address THE CITY’s questions about David Banks meeting with Johnson on Saferwatch, while stating: “the NYPD tested SaferWatch in five schools, but it did not meet our needs. New York City Public Schools did not spend any funds on this pilot, and no further action was taken.”

The mayor’s press office did not respond to THE CITY’s questions about Johnson meeting with Phil Banks’ chief of staff on behalf of Saferwatch, and THE CITY was unable to reach Terence Banks via any of the phone numbers listed to him.

Late Friday The Pearl Alliance’s website, which listed all its clients, including Saferwatch, was shut down.

A message THE CITY left for Danielle Artis, the Saferwatch representative listed in city lobbying records, did not get a response.

The Banks brothers made headlines Thursday after THE CITY revealed federal authorities had raided the homes of Philip Banks and David Banks, and seized the electronic devices of both of them, along with the cell phones of David Banks’ fiance, First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright.

Terence Banks’ home in Cambria Heights was also raided and agents took his cell phone as well.

On Friday Mayor Adams’ appeared on PIX 11 to repeat his mantra that the federal investigations are not distracting him, and to let what he calls the “review” run its course. He stood behind Chancellor Banks and First Deputy Mayor Wright and emphasized that they could continue to do their jobs.

“A lot of people believe in due process. Let the due process play out,” he said. “I did nothing wrong. I continue to live the life that I lived, follow the law, protecting the people of this city.”

Additional reporting by Jose Martinez and Alex Zimmerman of Chalkbeat.

NYC families flock to sign up for Summer Rising. They often don’t show up.

2024-07-29T23:10:54+00:00

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Since launching Summer Rising in 2021, New York City officials have frequently pointed to the large number of applications as evidence of the program’s success. But attendance numbers tell a very different story.

This year, roughly 138,000 elementary and middle school kids applied for 110,000 available seats in the free program spawned during the pandemic. Its combination of academics and camp-like activities aimed to reconnect students to school — and each other — after remote learning. For the first time, summer school was no longer just for students who were failing classes. That reduced its stigma.

In fact, once it began, parents clamored for it, and the city kept it going, ponying up city dollars this year to cover the costs after federal COVID stimulus funding dried up. Schools Chancellor David Banks said the program has become a “cornerstone in the lives of our youngest New Yorkers.”

Yet on an average day in 2022 and 2023, only about 60% of students enrolled in Summer Rising actually showed up to the academic portion of the day, which is overseen by the Education Department, according to agency figures obtained by Chalkbeat that haven’t previously been publicly reported. Officials didn’t share numbers for this summer but said attendance so far is “on par” with past years.

The ongoing attendance challenges are raising questions about whether the program — which costs $240 million a year — is the best use of city resources, and whether an initiative designed during the height of the pandemic is still the right approach. Low attendance has made it difficult for program operators to plan staffing, among other practical challenges, and raises questions for some educators about whether Summer Rising is meeting families’ needs.

Education Department officials attributed the anemic attendance to the optional nature of its free summer programming. Only a fraction of the attendees are mandated to attend Summer Rising for academic reasons. So it might not come as a surprise that the program’s daily attendance is dramatically lower than during the school year, which averaged between 88% and 89% in 2022 and 2023.

But interviews with more than a dozen principals, community-based organizations, families, and experts indicate that specific features of Summer Rising may be contributing to the attendance shortfalls.

“We’re not even evaluating to see if it’s doing the things that we want it to do,” said Bronx City Council Member Althea Stevens, the chair of the Council’s Committee on Children and Youth and a former youth services provider.

Stevens, along with some principals and program operators, argue that the city should return to the pre-COVID system, in which the Department of Youth and Community Development, or DYCD, offered free summer camps for an estimated 90,000 students — including more than 500 camps located in public schools for around 60,000 kids — while schools ran summer classes for kids who failed courses during the school year.

Prior to COVID-19, DYCD’s summer camps cost an estimated $61 million a year, according to United Neighborhood Houses, an organization that lobbies on behalf of nonprofit youth services providers. Last year, the city allocated $150 million for just the DYCD portion of Summer Rising, according to city budget officials.

Others fiercely defend the Summer Rising model.

Students’ COVID academic losses “are far from recovered,” said Steven Wilson, the cofounder and CEO of the National Summer School Institute, an organization that developed the summer school curriculum now used in roughly two-thirds of Summer Rising sites.

“The most caring thing we can do is make sure they have additional instruction — very high quality and very engaging instruction,” he said.

Education Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle called Summer Rising a “vital” program for families, saying, “We’re immensely proud that Summer Rising provides such essential supports to our families that need it the most.”

Attendance woes driven by range of factors

Educators and summer camp operators acknowledged that underwhelming attendance often comes with the territory of running free summer programs, where attendance is generally not mandatory and families aren’t on the hook financially.

“I don’t know how to fix the problem,” said one principal who runs a Summer Rising program, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to talk to the media. “A fair number of parents sign up and either decide to do something else, or kids talk them into doing something else.”

Even so, multiple Summer Rising nonprofit partners said they routinely saw higher attendance in the summer camp programs they previously ran, which didn’t have a designated academic portion.

A spokesperson for DYCD said attendance in school-based summer camps in 2019 averaged 69%, compared to 60% attendance for Summer Rising for the past three years.

The first four hours of the Summer Rising day are purely academic, a turnoff for some families seeking a more recreational experience. Parents of children with disabilities have consistently reported challenges getting accommodations for their kids. And logistical snags, including sparse communication with parents, a lack of field trips, and placements far from home, have kept some kids away, families, and educators said.

Mike Halpern, the assistant executive director of Mosholu Montefiore Community Center, a summer camp operator that runs 16 Summer Rising sites in the Bronx and Manhattan, said that when the Department of Youth and Community Development “let us do whatever we wanted … the kids would come more than they do now.”

Tova Snyder, center right, works with students to make sure they mix the right colors for a mural at the student entrance of the Theatre Arts Production Company School, or TAPCo, in the West Bronx. Snyder led an art class at the school after TAPCo landed a grant to paint the mural as part of the city’s summer school program, Summer Rising.

The lagging attendance can make it difficult to know how many teachers to hire and lead to inconsistent class sizes, several principals said.

Schools are supposed to follow up with families whose kids aren’t regularly attending, disenroll those who aren’t attending at all, and pull in students from the waitlist when possible. An Education Department spokesperson said students are supposed to be removed from the program following six consecutive absences and three outreach attempts. But outreach can be difficult in a program that only lasts six weeks.

When Kiri Soares, the principal of the Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women in downtown Brooklyn, ran her own summer school program prior to the pandemic, she made sure her kids showed up.

“They knew me, they knew my staff, we did the outreach,” she said.

But now, Soares runs a Summer Rising site filled mostly with families from other schools who she doesn’t know. That means just tracking down the families can take weeks, by which time the program is almost over, she said.

Academic focus divides families, educators

The dedicated time for academics — Summer Rising’s defining feature — has proved one of its most controversial.

Proponents say the program is helping. Students across roughly 126 Summer Rising sites using the National Summer School Institute curriculum in 2023 improved by an average of 15 percentage points on a literature test from the beginning to the end of the summer, and by 24 percentage points on a pre- and post-math test, according to figures compiled by the organization.

“I noticed it helped a lot,” said Shantel Andrews, the mother of an elementary student with a disability currently attending a Summer Rising program in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. “I fought for her to get in this year. I stayed up late. I’m glad I got her in.”

Some educators say that expanding summer school beyond kids who are required to attend has been most helpful to the students who have to be there. They say it helps them to be in classrooms with kids at other academic levels.

Others have found the opposite, arguing it’s harder to target support for kids who need it when they’re in larger, more heterogeneous groups.

For Michelle, a Brooklyn parent whose third grader got a spot in Summer Rising for the first time this year, the academic portion of the program was a major turnoff, and far less engaging than she expected.

“My child was very unhappy and cried when I picked her up the first day,” recalled Michelle, who asked to use only her first name because she works in education and is concerned about professional consequences. “She said, ‘this is school.’”

Michelle said she doesn’t mind some academic enrichment as part of a summer program, but “to have kids sit in a classroom with workbooks and tablets and call that enrichment … it’s not thoughtful.”

Eventually, Michelle decided to only send her daughter three days a week — even though she could go five days a week.

For families of the roughly 20% of city students who are mandated to receive special education services, reviews of Summer Rising are mixed.

The Education Department allocates each Summer Rising program between $5,200 and $6,600 to hire two education paraprofessionals to support students with disabilities, according to budget documents. There are more specialized programs with additional resources for students with 12-month Individual Education Programs, or IEPs.

Paul Trust, a Queens parent and public school teacher who’s previously had concerns about the academic focus of Summer Rising, said the program has been especially helpful for his child with a disability: “She came into September as the only student who came into school having gone up in reading.”

But Lupe Hernandez, a Manhattan parent of an 11-year-old with a disability who is entitled to year-round support through his IEP, was unhappy about the lack of school bus service in the evenings. And on his first day, a lack of planning left him sitting in a cafeteria for several hours.

In fact, she was so frustrated by his experience after that first day that even though he’s still technically enrolled, she hasn’t sent him back since.

Some push for return to pre-COVID camp system

Halpern, the Bronx Summer Rising camp operator, attributes his programs’ relatively high attendance — which he says hovers in the mid-70% range — to the weekly field trips to nature camps in Harriman State Park in the Catskills.

But Halpern has a notable edge: His organization owns the summer camps, making it possible to bring each of the 16 Summer Rising programs at least one day a week.

“The kids really, really enjoy the outdoors,” he said, “far away from the school yard environment.”

Other parents say their Summer Rising programs have struggled to consistently offer the frequently advertised once-a-week field trips, giving few if any chances to get outside the school.

Several program operators said it can be much more challenging to plan more intensive or elaborate recreational activities when they get so much less time with kids than they did in the previous summer camp system.

“There’s a little bit of a disconnect and misalignment with the curriculum educators are using in the morning … to what’s happening later in the afternoon with the CBOs,” said Jennifer Zweifler, an associate director with St. Nick’s Alliance who oversees three Summer Rising programs in Brooklyn.

In a “perfect world,” the city would return to the pre-COVID summer camp system, while still recruiting public school teachers to offer extra academic support, Zweifler said.

Soares, the Brooklyn principal, said “the crisis and the learning loss” that prompted the city to launch Summer Rising are still very real. But the attendance numbers should tell city officials that they need to rethink the program, she said.

“We’re facing a real dilemma of convincing kids and families that school is even worth going to,” she said. “Summer is wasted to be re-doing the form of learning [students do] all year long.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org .

30 years ago, he led a landmark case on NY’s school funding formula. Now he wants it overhauled.

2024-07-24T21:55:34+00:00

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More than 30 years ago, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity filed a landmark case against the state of New York, alleging that its school funding system violated the constitutional right of New York City students to a “sound basic education.” After a drawn out legal fight, the state’s highest court agreed.

It paved the way for the state’s Foundation Aid formula, which determines how much money is sent to school districts based on student need — for example, providing additional funding to districts that serve higher populations of students in poverty, among other factors. That formula, implemented in 2007, didn’t receive full funding for more than a decade. In the coming year, New York officials may revise the formula amid widespread concerns that it’s outdated.

Now, a lawyer who led the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, or CFE, during its legal fight claims the state’s approach to updating the formula is unconstitutional.

As part of a state budget agreement earlier this year, the Rockefeller Institute is conducting a study on how to revise the formula, which sends roughly $24.9 billion to districts — including more than $9.5 billion to New York City schools. The institute began holding a series of public hearings this month, taking place in Manhattan and other districts across the state, to solicit testimony on the current formula.

Michael Rebell, executive director of the Center for Educational Equity at Columbia University’s Teachers College and the lawyer who led CFE, argues it isn’t enough just to tweak the nearly two-decade-old formula. Instead, he believes a true accounting of student needs requires going back to the drawing board — and that’s exactly what he intends to do.

The Center for Educational Equity will undergo its own effort to create a fair and equitable school funding formula, Rebell said.

Chalkbeat asked Rebell about this effort, why he believes the state’s approach falls short of its constitutional mandate, and whether he’s gearing up for another legal fight.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You’ve referred to the Foundation Aid formula as outdated. Can you talk about some of the ways it’s failing to meet student needs?

To start off, the statistic that they use for counting the number of poverty-students is based on the 2000 census, or at least part of it is. Just out of the box, that is crazy. We’re looking at poverty figures from 24 years ago. Needless to say, in New York City, and in the rural areas all over the state, there have been huge changes.

It’s the same with this regional cost factor. That figure comes from 2006. It’s kind of nuts that we’ve got an 18-year old figure determining what’s a fair cost of living difference between the different parts of the state.

A lot of major changes have happened in the last 18 years. Some of the most obvious are: We didn’t know anything in those days about migrant students, and that’s become a big burden on New York City, on some of the Long Island districts, elsewhere in the state.

It’s the same with students in temporary housing. That was a minor issue in those days. There were a relatively small number of those kids, so that was also not put into the formula. But right now, we’ve got 10% or 11% of the students in New York City public schools in temporary housing, and as many people testified, there are a lot of extra costs that go along with that.

I’m from New York City. We’re certainly going to be sensitive to New York City’s interests, but we’re also concerned about kids throughout the state in rural areas. There’s a problem about “hold harmless.” And the reason that the legislature has been holding a lot of those districts harmless for the last five or six years is they’ve lost a lot of population. And there are some real questions about how you can have a viable school system if you’re substantially cut.

I’m not claiming to have an easy answer to that, but we are going to look into that.

Besides that, we have new needs like pandemic learning loss, and much greater concerns and issues about mental health throughout the state. So that’s why we’ve been saying for the last couple of years, “What you really need to do is start from scratch and say, let’s look at current needs — and once we examine what those current needs are, let’s come up with a fair formula.”

Our position is: That is exactly what the Constitution requires.

During your testimony, you said the state’s current approach to updating the Foundation Aid formula is “unconstitutional.” What is the constitutional mandate here, and why do you believe the state’s approach falls short of it?

The CFE case we started in 1993. Ten years later, we got this amazing decision from the highest court in the state that upheld our position 100% and more.

The system that was in effect before this court order was basically political wheeling and dealing. The powers that be — the speaker, the majority leader, and the governor — would go in a backroom somewhere, and they’d decide how much money we were going to spend on education, health, welfare, whatever. How much we were willing to raise taxes. Whatever it was to determine how much money was needed. But the basic consideration was a political calculation: How much do we want to spend on education? And then: How are we going to divvy up whatever that amount is?

That was always a political power play. Whoever was in control of the legislature was in control of how that pie was divvied up.

We found some correspondence that went from the Office of the Speaker to the state Education Department. This was a message saying, “All right, the decision has been made. Here are the percentages for this year. New York City gets 38.86% of the following amount, which is what the leaders agreed to. Run the figures and do it any way you want, but just make sure the bottom line is that New York City gets 38.86%.”

In other words, they’d have 50 different formulas, and depending who they felt they had to appeal to politically, they put more money in that basket.

We brought that to the court’s attention and they were just flabbergasted.

The court had already said the Constitution requires the state to provide all kids the opportunity for sound basic education. So in the decision, they said very clearly about five times, “The formula has to be based on need.”

The state must determine what is the amount of money you need for sound basic education based on relative need. Now that is the most critical thing, and that’s really what we’re relying on here. Essentially, the court was saying, “You don’t go in a backroom and throw around figures depending on political power.” You come up with some system that clearly and fairly looks at what the needs are, and you say, “Here’s the amount of money we need.” You don’t say, “Here’s the amount we’re willing to spend.”

That’s why we say it’s unconstitutional to do what the governor has been doing, because she’s not attempting to develop a new formula to determine what is the amount of funding we need based on need in 2024.

What does a constitutionally compliant school funding project look like? What work will the Center for Educational Equity be engaging in?

When we saw that the state was not going to do anything to move this forward, we got some support from a couple of foundations, and we’re entering into contract with the American Institutes for Research, which is one of these national firms that has a lot of experience and a lot of expertise in developing methodologies.

So we’re going to work with them to develop a new formula. We’re going to do stage one of it, but it’s really the state’s responsibility.

Offhand, there are six different ways of calculating poverty. Our people will come up with one of them, and we’ll have reasons for that, but in good faith, somebody else may say the other way of doing it is better. So it’s not an exact science. You can’t find the golden number, and everybody’s going to fall in line — which is why, if the state sets up a fair way of doing it, we’re better off having the state do it. If we come up with what we think is a fair, objective formula, well, we then have to advocate for it. If we have to, we’ll do that. But what I’d rather do is start the process.

During the current budget cycle, AIR is going to do what’s called a cost function analysis, a statistical pulling together of all of the relevant data that you can find, and doing a lot of data runs to figure out various ways of doing things.

So again, if we take poverty, there are six different ways that have been identified to calculate poverty. They’ll put in all the data for New York state and every school district in New York state, and they’ll give us what the outcome would be of the six different ways of doing it. So all of this statistical work that you need as a basis for making decisions will be done, but it’s all based on statistics.

There are things that you don’t have any statistics about. We’ve been very big on the importance of civic education recently, just to give an example. So the extra costs for getting students engaged in community engagement programs, we think is one of the best ways to get students civically involved. That costs money. It’s extra teacher time. It’s extra mentoring. Somehow, that should come into the calculation, if we want to make civic education a priority. I’m just picking up that one example, but you can imagine all kinds of qualitative things that need to be taken into account. That’s why you do need human judgment coming into it.

We’re going to do this cost analysis part of it, and we’re going to do that by next spring, when they’re doing the budget. But it’s got to have this qualitative thing. That’s part two. And we hope that by publicizing this, and keeping the pressure on them and saying, “We’ve already done some of the work for you, so it’ll be less expensive for you to do it next year. You guys can hire AIR or some other firm if you prefer, but pick up what they did. You’ve got all the statistical data now.

Get the job done in the second year.”

If the state chooses to continue with its approach, would you consider further legal challenges?

When the state was dragging its heels and not paying out the CFE money, we did bring another case. We filed it in 2014. These cases take a long time. It’s an enormous amount of data you have to pull together to prove to a court that they’re not meeting their responsibilities. We were ready to go to trial when the pandemic was starting, and that’s when Gov. Hochul came in. We had had this problem with Andrew Cuomo for years, and he wouldn’t budge. So we said, “We’re bringing you to court.” And we did. And as I said, the case was ready to go, and Hochul said, “Wait a minute… I’m going to settle this case. We’ve got a moral obligation. We should pay out the money.”

I don’t lightly threaten going to litigation, and to tell you the truth, I’ve done this twice — I’m not eager to do it again. Courts are not going to decide this overnight, so we’d rather work it out this way. We don’t want to wait years.

So I’d rather not, but I’m not telling you we wouldn’t.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

NYC schools get $150 million for cafeteria upgrades and $20 million extra to save popular food items

2024-07-03T19:00:18+00:00

Café-style seating. Deli-like grab-and-go meals. This is what school lunch looks like in nearly half of New York City’s middle and high schools.

And soon, the rest will get similar upgrades.

With $150 million in capital funding committed through the city’s recently passed budget, thousands more middle and high schools students will see their cafeteria experiences transformed over the next five years. This funding builds on $125 million previously secured for the initiative, and it will allow the Education Department to also begin exploring an expansion to elementary school cafeterias, officials said.

The changes are designed to make the school dining experience more palatable and the food more appealing. The effort to date, seems to have paid off — perhaps too well. When the Education Department slashed popular items like chicken tenders, dumplings, and cookies from cafeteria menus in February, the city’s budget director blamed it on the fact that too many kids were eating in these newly designed cafeterias.

“Bear in mind, the city made some significant investments in school cafeterias,” Jacques Jiha, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said at a March City Council hearing.”So what you end up with, you have a lot of kids hanging out in cafeterias now and eating more and more and more and more.”

The city responded by slashing some of students’ favorite items from the menu, but eventually reversed course after a massive outcry. And to guard against that happening again, the city’s final budget included an additional $20 million for school meals.

“There was a lot of pushback, and [the city] responded accordingly,” said Liz Accles, executive director of Community Food Advocates, which has pushed for the cafeteria upgrades. One of the big things that came out of the experience, she said, “you had students talking about what they liked about school food. How often do you get that?”

Accles praised the Office of Food & Nutrition Services for streamlining the process of the cafeteria upgrades over the past three years. The modern design has made a difference in how students approach school food, she added.

“Food is critical for all students, especially the kids who rely on the food,” Accles said.

Child hunger continues to be a growing problem in New York City. Roughly 78% of families said the cost of food was rising faster than their income, with 70% indicating it had become harder to afford groceries in the past year, according to a March poll conducted by the No Kid Hungry advocacy group. One in 4 New York City children are experiencing food insecurity, City Harvest said.

To encourage more kids to eat school food, Accles’ group has long been fighting to remove the stigma from it, and won a huge victory when New York City school lunch became universal. The cafeteria upgrades, she said, also help, particularly for older students.

“What this does is expresses the value of school meals, the value of the students themselves,” she said. “The updated seating, diner style booths, round tables — it looks more grownup…This is like a café. It feels good.”

Community Food Advocates found that high schools with redesigned cafeterias saw a 35% increase in student school lunch participation.

To find out whether a school cafeteria has been updated, check out the school kitchen dashboard the city launched last year. The website also includes such information as the number of meals served, whether there’s a salad bar, or if a school has a garden.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC budget deal invests more money in 3-K, but falls short of full early childhood restoration

2024-06-28T21:53:47+00:00

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A tentative budget agreement announced on Friday will see additional dollars funneled to New York City’s free preschool program for 3-year-olds, but falls short of the full restoration sought by child care advocates.

The deal on a total $112.4 billion city budget comes just days shy of the July 1 deadline and follows months of negotiations between City Council and Mayor Eric Adams’ administration. The turbulent budget process has seen Adams direct several rounds of cuts and restorations to the Education Department’s budget, as New York City braces for the expiration of billions of dollars of one-time federal pandemic relief money.

Officials did not say how much funding in total would be allocated to the city’s Education Department during the Friday announcement. In April, the mayor’s proposal devoted $32.2 billion to the city’s schools. That proposal represented a 2.4%, or $808 million, decline in funding for the next fiscal year.

Still, the city’s contribution to the Education Department’s budget — which also includes federal and state dollars — is set to rise by at least $1.6 billion. However, that additional funding isn’t enough to offset the $2.4 billion drop in federal funds.

The final budget represents a significant win for advocates who feared City Hall would institute deep spending reductions on top of expiring federal aid. But in the end, Adams dialed back the worst of the cuts and found hundreds of millions in city money to replace federal dollars.

“We began the year sounding the alarm,” wrote Kim Sweet, the executive director of Advocates for Children, an organization that represents high-need families and pushed hard for funding restorations. “We appreciate that the budget deal includes more than $600 million for critical education initiatives currently supported with expiring federal funds.”

Preschool programs see partial funding restoration

The budget agreement will see an additional $20 million invested in the city’s program for 3-year-olds to add seats for families without 3-K placements, as well as an additional $25 million — that will join an existing $15 million, for a total of $40 million — to expand days and hours at more preschool programs and help fill vacant 3-K and pre-K seats, according to city officials.

It will also add $30 million to increase funding for preschool special education seats. Children with disabilities have languished without placements despite a vow from Adams to provide universal access, as required by law. Adams had already agreed to replace $56 million in federal funding that he had previously directed to stabilize the preschool special education system, and another $25 million to create more seats and help provide other services like speech therapy.

City officials said the additional funding would guarantee every child with a disability a seat, though it remains to be seen if that promise will translate into reality — as the shortage of seats and related services has persisted for many years.

Under the budget agreement, a working group will also seek to develop reforms to the early childhood system, officials said.

The city budget “balances fiscal responsibility and taking care of working class New Yorkers,” the mayor said.

But the budget agreement won’t fully reverse the cuts that early childhood programs have faced this year. The city’s preschool system has taken center stage in budget negotiations, with council members and advocates pushing for further investments.

Adams put forward a plan in April that would replace $92 million of expiring federal funding for 3-K with city and state funds, but that plan did not restore a separate $170 million of city funding that was previously cut from early childhood programs. The mayor repeatedly argued the cuts were necessary because the city was wasting money on thousands of unfilled preschool seats.

Though the council initially sought a full restoration of the $170 million cut, Finance Committee Chair Justin Brannan acknowledged on Friday that “some of the numbers are aspirational,” conceding that vacant seats were an issue and the early childhood system needed deeper reforms.

“We needed to do more than just restore those cuts,” he said. “We needed to be smart about it, because you have a system right now that’s got a wait list and lots of vacant seats, so it needs reform … just throwing money at the problem wasn’t going to fix it.”

Despite cuts to the early childhood system, the mayor has promised every family who desires a seat in the city’s prekindergarten and 3-K system will receive one.

Still, last month, some families said they didn’t receive a spot in any program they applied to — or were admitted to a program that was far from home, posing severe logistical challenges. Officials later said many seats remained open and the city would work with families who were not initially admitted to find nearby open seats.

Council Speaker Adrienne Adams stressed that offering a 3-K seat to every family will require more funding from state sources. “We cannot afford to do this work alone,” she said.

Despite added funding, concerns over preschool, other programs persist

The looming fiscal cliff has also placed the fate of several other education programs in limbo. Those include roughly 400 contracted school nurses — some of whom provide care at buildings that previously lacked a school nurse — as well as Promise NYC, a program that offers subsidized child care for undocumented families.

The budget deal will see $25 million invested in Promise NYC, a roughly $9 million increase, though it was not immediately clear on Friday whether it would provide funding for school nurses.

Though child care advocates were pleased to see some funding restored, many remained concerned over the state of the city’s early childhood system. The sector has struggled under Adams, faced with payment delays that have hobbled many programs. Additionally, the city has not yet solved the longstanding salary disparity issue, where teachers in privately run but publicly funded pre-K programs earn significantly less than their counterparts teacher 3- and 4-year-olds in public school programs.

“The early childhood education system in New York City is complicated — the needs of children and families are not,” said Nora Moran, the director of policy and advocacy at United Neighborhood Houses. “We continue our fight to ensure there is a seat for every young New Yorker in our early childhood education system, and we urge the City to invest in our center-based early childhood workforce by bringing them into parity with their public school counterparts working the same jobs with the same credentials — something this budget fails to address.”

Budget process marked by repeated cuts and restorations

In recent months, the mayor has announced a series of budget cuts and investments as the city worked to fill sizable gaps left by the expiring federal relief funds — further clouding the already complicated process through which the city determines its more than $112 billion budget.

In November, the Education Department cut roughly $550 million from its budget as Adams directed a sweeping round of citywide reductions. Another round of cuts in January slashed an additional $100 million from the budget, though those cuts were less severe than had been previously anticipated.

Separately, the Adams administration has worked to find city and state dollars to replace funding for programs currently propped up by federal funds.

In April, the mayor announced the city would use more than $500 million of city and state funds to plug holes in the Education Department budget created by expiring COVID relief funds. And earlier this month, the mayor announced an additional $127 million would help reverse budget cuts at some schools that have faced enrollment losses, fund restorative justice programs that encourage peer mediation and other non-punitive methods of resolving conflicts, and restore hours for the city’s popular Summer Rising program.

Though some education programs that were previously propped up by federal funding will have dedicated city funds that persist beyond the next fiscal year, others — like a roughly $92 million expansion of 3-K, the Learning To Work program that supports students at risk of dropping out, and the Project Pivot program that partners schools with community organizations to reduce violence — will need to be renegotiated during the next budget process, teeing up future education funding fights.

City Council is expected to formally vote on the budget deal on Sunday.

Michael Elsen-Rooney contributed reporting.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NYC is short billions to comply with class size law, chief fiscal watchdog warns

2024-06-25T20:53:31+00:00

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New York City has not allocated enough funding to comply with aggressive new class size caps mandated under state law over the next four years, according to city Comptroller Brad Lander.

By the 2028 fiscal year, when the class size limits must be fully implemented, the city’s budget will be short between $1.5 billion and $1.65 billion for the cost of hiring over 14,000 new teachers, according to the comptroller’s estimates.

As soon as the 2026 fiscal year, the city’s planned budget for teacher hiring will fall short by $374 million to $422 million, including the cost of fringe benefits. (Education Department projections for new hiring are somewhat lower, between 10,000 and 12,000 new educators.)

The shortfall in the capital budget is even more acute. The city will need to construct new buildings to create enough room for schools that have little physical space to accommodate smaller class sizes, or otherwise limit the number of students who can enroll on those campuses. About 500 school buildings don’t have enough physical space to comply with the law, city officials have said.

Of the roughly $22 billion to $27 billion in additional funding the School Construction Authority estimates is needed to finance new buildings, Lander indicated roughly $4 billion has been directed to that effort along with roughly $2 billion in additional funds the state has ordered the city to allocate.

“The city school district’s education expense and capital funding plans do not provide sufficient funding to reduce class size as required by state law,” Lander wrote in a Thursday letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul and state legislative leaders. The comptroller supports class size reductions and is reportedly considering a run for mayor.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the city’s teachers union, which pushed for the class size law, said in a statement that state lawmakers “made it crystal clear that the city is obligated to fund and come into complete compliance with the state law.” Otherwise, he said, “the city will have an all out war with parents, teachers, and the Albany legislature.”

Under the law, classes may not exceed 20 children in kindergarten and max out at 25 children in high school grades. Under the previous rules, the caps ranged from 25 in kindergarten classes up to 34 in high schools. The law phases in over time — with an additional 20% of city classrooms required to meet the new caps each year through 2028.

The city is on track to be in compliance with the law through next school year, when 40% of city classrooms must meet the new limits, but Lander warned that would likely not be the case in the years after that. Under the state class size legislation, Lander has the authority to certify the city’s annual class size reduction plans.

“I am unable to make that certification,” he wrote in the letter to Hochul and legislative leaders.

Additional funding for teacher hiring and school construction “must be prioritized in future budgets to get our class size reduction plan on track,” Lander added in a separate statement.

Still, that lack of sign off “has no legal impact such as sanctions or an enforceable order” under the law, David Bloomfield, a professor of education, law, and public policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, wrote in an email.

But Lander’s analysis underscores the significant costs of implementing the state’s new class size caps. And it could provide some ammunition for advocates who have been pushing the city to rev up teacher hiring and school construction to meet the law’s requirements.

“It is highly questionable as to whether the city will be able to comply with the annual benchmarks in the class size law, starting next school year and beyond,” according to a petition circulated by the advocacy group Class Size Matters that has racked up over 500 signatures and was delivered to the mayor and chancellor on Monday. The city’s plan “is insufficient and fails to make the necessary investments in space and staffing.”

City officials have vowed that they will comply with the class size legislation, but have also critiqued it, noting that the state has not covered the added costs of hiring teachers and school construction. The policy may require the Education Department to spend more money on campuses that are relatively more affluent because higher-need schools tend to already have smaller classes, raising equity concerns from the state’s top education official.

“We are in compliance with the law,” Education Department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer wrote in a statement, noting that the city is working with union officials on implementation. “We appreciate that the comptroller has validated the need for additional state funding to meet the mandate in the years to come.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

A look at NYC’s upcoming school year: calendar quirks, cell phone bans, curriculum mandates

2024-06-25T20:30:15+00:00

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When New York City students and teachers say their farewells Wednesday, they’ll close the books on a school year marked by curriculum changes, political strife, and budget woes.

And when they return for the first day of school on Sept. 5, the new year will hold similar promise as well as uncertainty.

At Chalkbeat, we have covered all the twists and turns. Some of the major struggles of the last academic year came as little surprise to educators and families. Elementary school teachers in nearly half of the city’s 32 local school districts were still adjusting to the new mandated literacy curriculums. Educators still grappled with how to best serve the thousands of new migrant students entering the system. And advocates braced for fights over budget cuts, as one-time federal COVID stimulus funding evaporated.

Other challenges were not necessarily on anyone’s bingo card. The city’s decision to cut chicken tenders, cookies, dumplings and other popular food items from the cafeteria menu because too many kids were eating these fan favorites came as a surprise and was eventually reversed after much outcry. The rise of ChatGPT caught the Education Department off guard and was initially blocked on school devices, before schools Chancellor David Banks reconsidered his approach to the emerging technology. And few would have predicted the tense climate school communities are now facing because of the Israel-Hamas war, as antisemitism and Islamophobia seem to be on the rise.

As this year comes to a close, here’s what you need to know for next school year.

We want to hear from you: What should be on our radar as we plan for the fall? Email us at ny.tips@chalkbeat.org or fill out this form.

Calendar watch: Notable dates for the New York City 2024-25 school year

As usual, school is starting the Thursday after Labor Day, but unlike many school years, there are no other days off in September. (Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, which follows a lunar calendar, falls on Thursday, Oct. 3, and Friday, Oct. 4.)

For the first time, New York City schools will be closed for Diwali (Friday, Nov. 1), known as the “festival of lights,” and observed by Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, and some Buddhists.

Schools will have a one-day week before winter break — unless a 12-year-old can force the Education Department to reconsider. School is in session on Monday, Dec. 23, before closing the next day through the following Wednesday (Jan. 1, 2025). Previously when Dec. 23 fell on a Monday, the city ultimately made it a day off.

Also, next June will have one fewer day off than this year: Eid al-Adha falls on June 5, which is already a day off for “Anniversary Day.” The following day, Friday, June 6, is a “clerical day,” meaning no classes for most students except those in 6-12 and high schools.

Curriculum mandates could see more pushback from families and teachers

Next school year will be the first that all of the city’s local school districts will adopt the literacy curriculum mandate, the centerpiece of Banks’ education agenda. As this initiative expands, more pushback could bubble up. Already one school has won a waiver to get out of the mandate.

Meanwhile, the city is now turning its attention to implementing math curriculum mandates for middle schools and expanding its mandate for ninth grade algebra in high schools.

A school cell phone ban could be on the horizon

Not only has Gov. Kathy Hochul said she’s considering a statewide school cell phone ban, Banks has also been getting feedback from New York City principals, who have overwhelmingly told him they’d like a citywide policy banning phones.

But the details of a ban are critical as to whether it will help reconnect students with their schoolwork — and each other, according to results of a Chalkbeat survey. Most schools across the five boroughs already have bans in place, but they differ dramatically. There’s no foolproof system, educators, parents, and students say, and whatever policy is ultimately passed will have to address not only the logistics but also the concerns of parents, who are often prime offenders of contacting kids during the school day.

Regents exams may soon be optional for a NY high school diploma

State education officials are overhauling high school graduation requirements that will make Regents exams optional. They plan to release a more detailed plan in November outlining how schools can implement the changes.

Though the exams aren’t going away, students will be able to choose from a menu of options to demonstrate their knowledge and skills in seven key areas: critical thinking, effective communication, cultural and social-emotional competences, innovative problem solving, literacy across content areas, and status as a “global citizen.”

One model, already in place at nearly 40 high schools that have waivers for Regents exams other than English, focuses more on project-based learning with “performance-based” assessments.

Budget cuts could force schools to do more with less

The nation’s largest school system has been bracing for impact as more than $7 billion in federal aid to the Education Department expires this summer. With that uncertainty comes whiplash, with proposed cuts followed by subsequent funding restorations.

Mayor Eric Adams ultimately decided to prop up the budgets of hundreds of schools that have struggled with declining enrollment since the pandemic. Still, city officials did not say whether schools will avoid cuts in the middle of the school year if the number of students who enroll is lower than anticipated, a practice that was paused during the pandemic but returned this school year.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

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How much does your NYC school spend? A new budget tool has the answer.

2024-06-21T19:26:18+00:00

How much money did your New York City school get this school year?

For years, the answer to that seemingly basic question has been surprisingly difficult to track down. While the city publishes detailed breakdowns of several components of a school’s budget, there was previously no public place where all those individual parts were added together.

A new online tool the Education Department rolled out in recent weeks is meant to change that.

The online infographics, called “Budget At A Glance,” provide an overview of a school’s entire budget, including the money it gets through the Fair Student Funding formula, an algorithm designed by the city Education Department to direct more money to higher-need schools, along with city, state, and federal initiatives like Title I funding for high-poverty schools.

A screenshot of NYC Public Schools Budget At A Glance for Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan.

The pages break down how much money each school received per student, and allows you to compare it to the citywide average of roughly $21,112 per student.

“Our families are our primary stakeholders, and transparency efforts like this help make school budgets more accessible for our families,” said Emma Vadehra, the Education Department’s chief operating officer. Vadehra said the idea for the pages grew out of recommendations from a working group convened in 2022 to improve the Fair Student Funding formula, which accounts for about two-thirds of school budgets.

A searchable version of the tool is available on the Education Department’s website. The Budget At A Glance pages are also posted on each school’s official city website. You can find the pages by navigating to the “Reports” tab on the school website, then clicking on “Budget and Finances.”

Along with the breakdowns of which sources of funding the school’s budget came from, the pages detail where the money went. They show the share of the budget going toward teacher salaries, salaries of other employees, non-personnel costs like supplies, and pension benefits.

The average spending of $21,112 per student doesn’t include expenses that benefit schools but are administered centrally, like school food, transportation, safety agents, and facilities maintenance. Those costs average out to around $13,000 per student, bringing the average total spending per student to around $34,000.

Schools outside of the city’s 32 community school districts, including District 75 programs for students with significant disabilities, also have Budget At A Glance pages, but are funded through a different formula.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Eric Adams directs $127 million to prop up NYC school budgets, avert summer school cuts

2024-06-04T18:48:28+00:00

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Mayor Eric Adams will direct $127 million more into the Education Department’s budget, part of an effort to reverse cuts to programs funded with soon-to-expire federal dollars.

The infusion of money, which officials announced on Tuesday, will prop up the budgets of hundreds of schools that have struggled with declining enrollment since the pandemic. The new dollars will also help boost a slew of other programs, including the city’s free summer school program, which faced reduced hours this year, and restorative justice programs that offer less punitive methods of resolving conflict.

“We inherited a fiscal cliff,” Adams said during a press conference, pointing to more than $7 billion in federal aid to the Education Department that expires this summer. “We will continue to invest in children.”

Though Adams initially painted a dire picture of the city’s finances, in part due to billions in projected spending on services for an influx of migrants, he has incrementally reversed course on several proposed cuts.

In April, the mayor said the city found more than $500 million to continue financing initiatives that were funded by one-time federal dollars, including over 500 social workers and psychologists. Adams contends the city’s revenue is greater than expected, though critics have repeatedly said the mayor’s projections were unnecessarily pessimistic.

Before Tuesday’s announcement, the Education Department was facing an overall reduction to its operating budget of about 2.4%, or roughly $808 million, as increases in city funding have not completely plugged the hole created by expiring federal dollars.

Here’s what to know about the programs benefiting from the $127 million investment announced Tuesday:

$75 million to reverse cuts to school budgets

The Education Department used hundreds of millions of federal relief funding to avoid budget cuts at schools that enrolled fewer students since the pandemic hit, but had not committed to keeping it next school year.

Officials said they will now use about $75 million to blunt the impact of enrollment declines at about 15% of the city’s schools that otherwise would have seen cuts.

Funding is typically directly based on a school’s number of students. But even as most schools suffered enrollment declines during the pandemic, city officials were reluctant to slash budgets as educators scrambled to catch students up academically and mental health needs remained high.

Adams has tried to phase out the “hold harmless” program to help schools avoid the shock of large budget cuts all at once when the federal money dried up — though he has faced pushback from City Council.

“We want to slowly address this issue by not hitting the schools right away,” Adams said.

Meanwhile, the city is projecting a slight enrollment increase next year, which could also help temper more dramatic school budget cuts. Still, city officials did not guarantee schools will avoid cuts in the middle of the school year if the number of students who enroll is lower than anticipated, a practice that was paused during the pandemic but returned this school year.

City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, whose relationship with the mayor has been increasingly strained, said she was “beaming” thanks to the new funding.

“When schools can count on consistent aid, receiving no less than what was provided in the previous year, they can adequately plan,” she said.

$20 million to restore enrichment hours for Summer Rising

Middle schoolers who enroll in the city’s popular summer program will no longer face reduced hours.

The city initially planned to cut two hours of programming each day for middle school children and cancel Friday sessions, which is often when field trips were scheduled. There are about 110,000 Summer Rising slots, with elementary and middle schoolers eligible for a mix of academic programs and enrichment activities.

“We are relieved that Mayor Adams came to his senses,” wrote Nora Moran, the director of policy and advocacy at United Neighborhood Houses, which represents community organizations that operate some of the city’s summer programming.

Still, she said it is difficult for providers to plan given the months of funding uncertainty. “Every day that has gone by since this cut was announced in November was wasted time to plan and staff up for summer programs,” Moran said.

The mayor previously announced plans to keep the Education Department’s portion of the program’s budget steady. But the afternoon enrichment activities are funded by the Department of Youth and Community Development — and Adams had cut about $20 million of its $149 million contribution.

$32 million for teacher recruitment, restorative justice, and more

A bevy of other programs that were financed with one-time federal money will see those dollars replaced with city funds, including teacher recruitment efforts ($10 million), computer science education ($4 million), and tutoring programs in reading and math ($4 million).

City Council members had also pressed the city to continue supporting restorative justice programs that focus on resolving conflicts by talking them through rather than resorting to punitive discipline including suspensions. The city previously used federal funding to more than double the program’s budget, which means a majority of its funding now comes from expiring federal sources.

Officials said the city is replacing about $6 million of the $8 million in federal funding spent on the program this year. A spokesperson did not say how much total funding they plan to devote to restorative justice next year. The additional $127 million announced Tuesday is not guaranteed to continue beyond next school year, officials confirmed.

Michael Mulgrew, head of the city’s teachers union, largely praised the city’s funding boost. “This is progress,” he said in a statement. “These are programs and initiatives that make a difference for our students and our school communities.”

Some programs still face cuts

A handful of other programs are still on the chopping block, most notably free preschool.

Mayor Adams has already restored nearly $150 million in federal funding for preschool programs for students with disabilities and programs serving 3-year-olds. But he has not reversed a $170 million cut in city funding for early childhood programs, including 3-K.

The mayor has repeatedly emphasized that there are thousands of empty preschool seats and the cuts are needed to bring supply and demand more in line. “It just does not make financial sense to pay for 19,000 seats that our babies are not in,” he said.

Still, advocates contend the city has not done enough to publicize the free programs as families struggle to find affordable child care and they also note that not every family who wants a 3-K seat was initially matched with one. An Education Department spokesperson noted that the city plans to spend $5 million on an outreach campaign and vowed to add funding for preschool if demand rises.

The city has also not restored about $65 million in funding for more than 400 contracted nurses who provided services in some school buildings that previously lacked a nurse.

It’s possible some of these cuts will be reversed as the City Council continues to negotiate with the mayor. A final budget is due by July 1.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Preschool funding, school food, and other key education issues take center stage at budget hearing

2024-05-15T22:39:24+00:00

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As New York City schools stand to lose nearly $1 billion in the next fiscal year, City Council members pressed Education Department officials on how the looming drop in funding could impact the city’s early childhood system, school cafeteria menus, and other key education programs.

The Wednesday hearing came as City Council members and Mayor Eric Adams continue to negotiate the city’s budget for the next fiscal year, which is due by July 1.

Last month, Adams unveiled a budget proposal that would see the city’s Education Department funding shrink by 2.4%, or $808 million, next year — largely spurred by the expiration of billions of dollars of one-time federal COVID relief funds. Despite that drop in funding, the proposed budget devotes half a billion dollars in city and state funds to preserve several education programs currently propped up by the expiring federal dollars, including money for hundreds of social workers, the city’s free preschool program for 3-year-olds, and new staffers working in homeless shelters.

Other programs that have relied on the federal funds, however, remain at risk.

Education Department officials acknowledged the difficulties presented by the expiring federal funds, noting that they’ve advocated for the continuation of all such programs. Specific decisions about which programs to devote long-term city funding to have been made by the city’s Office of Management and Budget, said Emma Vadehra, the department’s chief operating officer.

Questions also centered on how the city’s schools would be impacted by sweeping cuts that Adams has ordered city agencies to enact over the past year to help cover costs for services to an influx of migrants. Under that separate directive, the Education Department faces more than $700 million in cuts to city funding for specific programs next year, including roughly $170 million slashed from early childhood programs. (The city’s overall contribution to the Education Department’s budget would still rise by nearly $1.6 billion under Adams’ proposal, though it’s not enough to offset the vast drop in federal funding next year.)

Schools Chancellor David Banks told council members it’s been “very challenging” to select certain programs to prioritize.

“I mean, it’s like, ‘Which one is your favorite child?’” he said. “These are all wonderfully, amazing programs. We don’t want to lose any of them.”

Here’s a look at some of the key education issues that arose during the hearing:

Council member clashes with DOE over preschool programs

Though Adams’ proposed budget would replace $92 million of expiring federal funding for 3-K — the city’s free preschool program for 3-year-olds — it does not restore a separate $170 million cut to city funding for early childhood programs. City Council members repeatedly expressed concerns over that cut during the hearing, seeking further details from Education Department officials about the potential impact of reduced funding.

Building up the free prekindergarten system for the city’s 3- and 4-year-olds was a centerpiece of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration. Under Adams, the sector has been plagued with problems, including declining enrollment and lengthy payment delays to community organizations running programs.

On Wednesday, Education Department officials contended those issues had been inherited from the prior administration. They pointed to some improving metrics in the city’s early childhood system, stating enrollment in such programs had grown to roughly 114,000 children. That was up from 97,000 children earlier this year, according to city data released in November. Meanwhile, the average processing time for payments for early childhood providers had decreased to roughly 11 days.

Officials added they’ve worked to shift existing seats to neighborhoods with higher demand.

Capacity for the city’s 3-K program is roughly 53,000 seats, with about 44,000 filled, according to figures shared by Education Department officials during the hearing.

In one particularly contentious exchange, Brooklyn Council Member Lincoln Restler questioned why Education Department officials were unable to say definitively how many seats the city’s preschool programs would be able to offer next year after the $170 million cut.

“These are the cuts that the mayor has proposed that he wants to implement to your agency: What would be the impact of them?” he said. “How many fewer seats would you have? This is like the most plain, simple, obvious question that we were going to get all day. I’m a little disappointed that we’re not getting a straight answer.”

Education Department officials said any reductions would be focused in areas where seats aren’t filled.

Restler also pressed department officials for details about the full release of a report on 3-K seats. City officials hired the consulting firm Accenture last year to “map out needs and seats” as the program grappled with thousands of vacancies.

Officials previously said Accenture would be paid $760,000 to compile the report. But on Wednesday, Education Department officials cited a significantly lower figure of “$350,000 or $250,000.” They did not provide a precise timeline for the release.

City officials did not immediately explain the discrepancy between the two figures.

Budget cuts prompt concerns over school food

City Council members also expressed concerns over how budget cuts to school food would affect students next year. A $60 million November cut to the city’s school foods budget sparked outcry earlier this year, as the reduced funding forced cafeterias to remove popular items like chicken dumplings and bean and cheese burritos from their menus.

Though the city later restored some of those menu items, council members questioned whether the lingering cuts would impact cafeteria menus in the coming school year.

“We are monitoring this very closely,” Vadehra said. “We are very invested in making sure all of these food options stay on the menu for students next year.”

City officials express concerns over state funding

Education Department officials noted multiple times during the hearing that although state funding for the city’s schools increased for the coming fiscal year, the city is getting less than expected. A change to the formula determining how much money is sent to districts left New York City schools with $126 million less than anticipated.

Over the coming year, the state’s Education Department will partner with the Rockefeller Institute to conduct a longer term examination of that formula, in hopes of implementing further changes, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced last month.

“Our costs do continue to grow each year, which is why it’s important the state’s contribution — which is a lesser proportion of our budget now than it was 20 years ago — continues to increase,” Vadehra said.

City Education Department officials also told council members they had not yet received sufficient funding to fully implement a state law mandating smaller class sizes. But the department will continue to invest in hiring additional teachers and expanding classroom space to remain in compliance with the law, officials said.

An additional $180 million will go to school budgets, with around $135 million explicitly earmarked for compliance with the state class size law, Vadehra said. She estimated those funds would allow for hiring between 1,200 and 2,000 new teachers.

“Assuming those teachers can be found,” she added.

Education programs still at risk as fiscal cliff looms

City Council members drew attention to several education programs that have relied on expiring federal funds and are not included in the mayor’s proposed budget — including $65 million funding roughly 400 contracted school nurses, as well as millions of dollars to support restorative justice programs.

Education Department officials were unable to say during the hearing how many schools would be left without a nurse as that funding dries up later this year. Currently, every public school in the city has at least one nurse in the building.

Meanwhile, restorative justice programs, which aim to resolve conflict through peer mediation and other less punitive methods, are at risk of losing more than half of their current budget as the federal funds expire. Education Department officials said roughly $8 million of the $13.6 million committed to restorative justice programs this year comes from expiring federal dollars.

At the hearing, Banks encouraged council members to advocate for the funding to be restored.

“You all are still engaged in the process,” he said. “You can certainly, as you are engaged in this conversation and negotiations, push to make sure that [restorative justice] gets restored.”

In total, the city’s Education Department faces a gap of more than $200 million in expiring federal funds for education programming next year, officials said.

Alex Zimmerman contributed reporting.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

As NYC’s education budget hits a fiscal cliff, Adams saves several school programs

2024-04-24T21:51:44+00:00

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New York City public schools would see its budget shrink by 2.4%, or $808 million, next fiscal year under a more detailed budget presented by Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday.

The smaller budget is largely the result of expiring federal relief dollars, and Adams’ proposal saves a slew of programs that were on the chopping block because they were financed with one-time money that flooded into city coffers in the wake of the pandemic.

Officials announced last week that they will use more than $500 million in city and state funds to keep hundreds of social workers, new staffers working in homeless shelters, and an expansion of preschool for 3-year-olds, among other initiatives.

“We inherited fiscal cliffs,” Adams said during a rally outside City Hall on Wednesday. “We had to continue to fund these programs in a real way.”

Overall, the city’s contribution to the Education Department’s budget would rise by nearly $1.6 billion under Adams’ proposal, though not enough to completely offset the $2.4 billion drop in federal funding next year. The state’s contribution is set to increase by $202 million. The mayor’s proposed operating budget for the department is $32.2 billion.

Advocates and City Council leaders have praised Adams’ efforts to find funding for programs that were operated with one-time money. But he has also faced criticism over the past year for ordering sweeping cuts to city agencies to help finance services for an influx of migrants.

Those reductions have not been fully reversed, and the Education Department faces over $700 million in cuts next year under that directive, including $170 million less for early childhood programs and the elimination of vacant non-classroom positions.

Adams’ budget replaces expiring 3-K funding, but advocates say it’s not enough

Adams has faced significant blowback for scaling back the city’s ambitious plan to offer universal free preschool programs for 3-year-olds, also known as 3-K, a promise made by Mayor Bill de Blasio and financed with the one-time federal dollars.

Adam’s budget replaces $92 million of expiring federal funding for 3-K, but does not restore the broader $170 million cut in city funding for preschool programs. Schools Chancellor David Banks said during a City Council hearing last month that those cuts are “extremely hurtful to the entire enterprise of early childhood” and predicted that they would be restored.

But even without replacing those early childhood cuts, Adams insisted on Wednesday that every family who wants a 3-K seat will have access to one. Officials are now planning to spend $5 million on outreach efforts to get the word out about the program, though Adams previously argued that vacant slots suggested the program needed to be “right-sized.”

“How do you have 23,000 vacant pre-K, 3-K, seats and we see that as a great program?” Adams said. “No. A great program is when we place those babies in those seats.”

Early childhood advocates were skeptical that the mayor’s efforts would be enough to guarantee every child a seat. They pointed out that the $92 million commitment to replace federal funding for 3-K expansion is for one year only, though city officials said they’re looking for longer-term funding sources.

“Without further investments in the child care system, the City will not be able to fulfill the Mayor’s crucial promise,” Gregory Brender, the chief policy and innovation officer at the Day Care Council, wrote in a statement. “The Executive Budget remains a perilous proposal for New York City’s early childhood education system.”

Advocates also pointed out that the city has only partially replaced federal funding that Adams used to bolster special education preschool programs, even as officials acknowledged last month that hundreds of students with disabilities don’t have access to seats to which they’re legally entitled.

The Education Department’s budget could still change

The mayor’s budget is still subject to negotiations with the City Council, which must pass a final budget by July 1.

Advocates and local lawmakers are pushing for Adams to fund a handful of other initiatives whose funding is not guaranteed after this year.

Those include restorative justice initiatives that encourage peer mediation and other methods of resolving conflicts to reduce punitive methods like suspensions; a mental health program for students at 50 high-need high schools; and a program that offers subsidized child care for undocumented families. City Council officials also pointed to the need for more funding for school building upgrades, as fewer than 1 in 3 of the city’s schools are fully accessible to people with physical disabilities.

“We are relieved that many of the education programs supported with federal stimulus funding are no longer in jeopardy,” Kim Sweet, executive director of Advocates for Children, an organization that works on behalf of low-income families, wrote in a statement. “We urge City leaders to go further to prevent the loss of other critical supports that students and families need.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Eric Adams commits $500 million to partially avert fiscal cliff for NYC schools

2024-04-19T17:01:03+00:00

Mayor Eric Adams is cobbling together more than $500 million in city and state funding to plug a hole in the Education Department’s budget left by the federal COVID relief funding that’s expiring this year, he announced on Friday.

The money will prop up a range of education programs that were set to be cut because of the disappearing federal dollars, including hundreds of social workers, an expansion of free preschool for 3-year-olds, and new staffers working in homeless shelters.

By far, this marks the city’s largest commitment to date to replace the dwindling pandemic aid. Adams previously found $80 million to continue funding Summer Rising, the city’s summer school and recreation program, for one year.

Adams indicated that the city was able to restore programs through a variety of funding sources, and he credited the city’s “strong fiscal management” and “booming” economy.

“We are sticking our fingers in the cushions of our couches, finding every quarter we can find,” Adams said at a press conference Friday at P.S. 34 in the East Village, flanked by City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, D-Queens, and schools Chancellor David Banks.

“We won’t be relying on temporary funds,” he added. “You can’t have a ‘cross your finger’ government and hope for the best.”

The announcement came as city officials were pushing state legislators to finalize a deal extending mayoral control of city schools, a major priority for Adams.

The city received more than $7 billion in one-time federal education funds during the pandemic and is spending roughly $1 billion of those dollars this school year on ongoing initiatives that ran the risk of being cut when the federal aid expired this summer.

The $514 million dollar commitment will temporarily stave off some of those cuts for another year, while making longer-term investments in other programs. It won’t, however, cover the entire $1 billion fiscal cliff set to hit this summer, meaning significant cuts are still expected.

The final, adopted budget agreement between the City Council and Adams isn’t due until June 30, leaving time for changes.

Still, Council Speaker Adams, who has sparred with her former Bayside High School classmate Mayor Adams in recent months over budget cuts to schools, libraries, and more, struck a celebratory note Friday.

“If I could still do backflips like when we were in high school, this would be the moment,” she said.

15 programs get new sources of funding

City officials committed to new funding for a total of 15 programs currently funded by federal aid.

The initiatives that will get committed city funding for more than one year include: roughly 450 social workers and 60 school psychologists; dozens of school staffers who work with families in homeless shelters; 113 new community schools that partner with nonprofits to provide extra services to families; new internship and career preparation programs in high schools and new literacy initiatives, including Banks’s signature NYC Reads program and dyslexia screening, according to city officials.

The city will also give multiple years of dedicated funding to bilingual education programs, an expansion of the Public Schools Athletic League, and translation and interpretation services.

Several other big-ticket education programs funded by federal pandemic aid will get city funding for next year, but don’t have committed funding in future years.

Those programs include: A roughly $92 million expansion of 3-K, the city’s free preschool program for 3-year-olds; additional arts programs; the Learn To Work program that supports students at risk of dropping out; the Project Pivot program partnering schools with community organizations to reduce violence; and money to support the city’s “Affinity” high schools, which receive support from outside organizations like the Urban Assembly.

Adams has been dogged by criticism for scaling back proposed expansions to the city’s early childhood system, including former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s proposal to offer universal pre-K for 3-year-olds — a plan that relied on the one-time funds. Adams said the city will spend $5 million on outreach efforts for prekindergarten and 3-K as thousands of seats remain unfilled, and $8 million will go toward improving a portal for families applying for child care vouchers.

But officials have only committed to funding the 3-K expansion for one additional year.

“Our goal is to look for ways to fund it in the long term,” said Jacques Jiha, the city’s director of the Office of Management and Budget. For his part, Adams vowed that all families who want a 3-K seat will have access to one.

The city has also not reversed $170 million in cuts to early childhood education enacted in earlier versions of Adams’ budget.

Rebecca Bailin, the executive director of New Yorker United for Childcare, a group lobbying for expanded 3-K and pre-K, said the mayor’s decision “is a step in the right direction,” but “falls entirely short of the investment and infrastructure needed to fund a truly universal 3-K and pre-K.”

The city will also commit $56 million to increase the pay for providers of special education pre-K programs, which have long struggled to adequately pay staff and have seen major seat shortages as a result. Though that amount is less than the roughly $96 million in federal pandemic aid the city spent on special education pre-K this year, the city is separately committing $25 million for special education pre-K to create classes and help provide services in district schools such as speech and occupational therapy in an effort to rely less heavily on outside providers.

Adams had previously vowed to offer a pre-K special education seat for every child who needed one, which is required by law, but the city has still failed to provide seats for hundreds of students.

Cuts still ahead

New York City’s efforts to ease the impact of the fiscal cliff have been far more successful than other municipalities, according to Banks.

“Across the country, school districts are taking very painful measures to adjust to the loss of their stimulus funding,” Banks said, citing layoffs in Washington D.C., Houston, and Ann Arbor, Michigan. ”New York City has not laid off any staff, and there has been no reduction to school budgets.”

But there are still painful cuts likely ahead.

Among the items covered by stimulus money that city officials did not commit to propping up is $175 million in “hold harmless” funds to prop up the budgets of schools that lost enrollment during the pandemic. School budgets are usually tied to enrollment, but officials paused that practice during the pandemic and have been gradually phasing it back in.

That money went directly into the budgets of nearly 600 schools, with some receiving as much as $1.7 million more than they would have this school year.

Advocates for Children, a group that works with low-income families, has mounted an aggressive campaign to convince city officials to restore expiring federal dollars, and largely celebrated the mayor’s announcement.

Still, the organization pointed to some programs that remain in limbo, including restorative justice programs that offer alternatives to suspensions, some mental health supports, and an initiative that provides subsidized child care to undocumented families.

“Students and their families rely on these programs, and we cannot afford to lose them,” wrote Kim Sweet, the group’s executive director.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

School staffers in shelters are a lifeline to NYC’s homeless families. Now their jobs are at risk.

2024-04-04T10:00:00+00:00

Dollie and her daughter were living in a Queens homeless shelter in January when the first grader came down with a severe bout of mononucleosis.

Dollie, who asked to use only her first name, was overwhelmed by the task of managing her daughter’s medical care and mounting school absences on top of her own work and housing search.

Fortunately, there was a staffer from the city Education Department working in her shelter to help with exactly this kind of situation.

The staffer, called a community coordinator, helped connect Dollie with medical care for her daughter, showed her what records she needed to provide the school to excuse the absences, and calmed her down when it all became too much.

“I would’ve been lost,” without her, Dollie said. She credits the community coordinator with getting her daughter better treatment, ensuring she returned to school quicker, and helping Dollie avert an investigation from the Administration of Children’s Services.

But the roughly $12 million in funding that pays the salaries of 100 community coordinators working across the city’s network of homeless shelters is set to run dry this summer, leaving the fate of the staffers up in the air even as the city confronts record numbers of homeless kids.

Seventy-five of the community coordinators are funded with one-time federal pandemic aid that expires in June, and the remaining 25 are supported with city funds that have not yet been renewed.

The position of shelter-based community coordinator was created in 2022 at the urging of advocates. Prior to the pandemic, community coordinators were only based in schools. The Education Department also employs other staffers called “family assistants” who work in shelters and are not funded with federal aid. But advocates say those staffers, who make less than community coordinators and work only 10 months a year, often can’t meet all the complex needs of families in shelters.

The community coordinators are among a long list of critical staff members and programs whose funding is tied to expiring federal aid – a list that includes 450 school social workers, free preschool for 3-year-olds, and community schools that partner with community organizations to provide extra services to families.

As budget deadlines approach, families and advocates are urging the city to preserve the community coordinators, arguing they play a critical role on the frontlines of two colliding crises: the exploding number of students – many of them newly arrived migrants – living in homeless shelters, and elevated rates of chronic absenteeism in the wake of the pandemic.

“It is unthinkable that funding for shelter-based community coordinators is in jeopardy at a time of such tremendous need,” said Jennifer Pringle, the director of the Learners in Temporary Housing project at the nonprofit Advocates for Children, which works to support the education of homeless youth.

Education Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle said the coordinators “provide critical resources and supports to our young people in temporary housing.

“We are extremely grateful for the stimulus funding that we used to support a range of programs and roles that support student wellbeing, especially as we continue to respond to the ongoing migrant crisis,” she added. “We will review these priorities as we go through the budget process.”

NYC sees a record number of homeless students

The number of city children living in a shelter or doubled up last year hit a record high of roughly 120,000 – a 14% increase over the previous years – thanks in large part to an influx of tens of thousands of migrant families.

Many of those families need immediate support enrolling their kids in school, getting evaluations for special education services, and coordinating transportation – particularly if they have to move to a shelter in another part of the city under Mayor Eric Adams’s 60-day shelter limit rule.

That’s where the community coordinators come in. They work directly from the shelters, though they often have to bounce between multiple locations.

Having staffers knowledgeable about the school system physically in the shelters, rather than having to rely on phone calls or visits to the school, makes a huge difference for parents like Dollie.

“You have eye communication. You have more understanding, you don’t have to go to two to three people to get a direct answer,” she said. Knowing that her community coordinator had seen firsthand the conditions she was living in at the shelter also made Dollie more willing to open up to her, she said.

The community coordinator ended up helping not just with school issues for Dollie’s daughter, but also with Dollie’s own work, education, and housing needs.

“I had lost hope, I had lost a lot,” Dollie recalled. “She went above and beyond with helping me. She brought my self confidence back in me where it was able to help me with my child.”

Coordinators combat chronic absenteeism

Job one for community coordinators is helping families regularly get their kids to school.

Citywide, rates of chronic absenteeism remain far higher than before the pandemic, with students in shelters logging among the highest rates of absenteeism in the city. In the 2021-22 school year, 72% of students living in shelters were classified as chronically absent.

But figuring out how to support individual families means earning the trust of families and unraveling multiple, overlapping challenges keeping kids from school.

In one case, according to advocates, a community coordinator learned that a child was embarrassed to attend school because he’d outgrown his wheelchair, and helped fit him for a new one. In another, a coordinator helped connect a student who’d just had a baby to a public school with a day care on site.

When Dollie’s daughter fell ill with mononucleosis, she dealt with high fevers and lethargy that made it impossible to concentrate on schoolwork. The school called to warn Dollie about the mounting absences, which stretched to almost a month. But Dollie was most concerned about getting her daughter the care she needed and ensuring she wouldn’t infect other kids.

The community coordinator, meanwhile, checked in regularly, asking about the girl’s fever and helping connect Dollie with doctors. She didn’t pressure Dollie about the absences, but made sure she had everything she needed to feel ready to send her daughter back to school, Dollie said. Without that support, the absences would have likely extended even longer, and could have triggered additional consequences like a child welfare investigation, Dollie added.

The family left the shelter recently and moved out of the city, but Dollie worries what will happen to other families in similar positions if the community coordinators aren’t funded next year.

“I really hope they do keep her there,” she said. “Without them, these shelters are nothing.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

City Council calls for reversals of cuts to early childhood programs, more money for school food

2024-04-01T19:07:25+00:00

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New York City Council members unveiled their response to Mayor Eric Adams’ budget proposal on Monday, calling on the city to reverse recent budget cuts and provide millions of dollars in additional funding for school food, early childhood education, and other programs.

Adams’ preliminary city budget cut about $100 million in funding from the city’s schools in January. Those cuts — though less severe than anticipated — came on top of roughly $600 million in cuts announced in November.

Under the mayor’s proposals, early childhood education programs have seen steep cuts in recent months — with roughly $170 million slashed. Though schools Chancellor David Banks hinted at a possible reversal last month, Adams later put a damper on that prospect.

The council’s April budget response calls on the Adams’ administration to restore that funding — and to increase the number of seats offered in the city’s 3-K and prekindergarten programs through an added $45 million investment.

“Together with housing, early childhood education has risen to the top for working and middle class families,” Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said at a Monday press conference. “We need to strengthen our early childhood education system, which has been beset by bureaucratic challenges and undermined by budget cuts.”

In the budget response, council members said their assessments had identified significantly higher tax revenues and available funds than projected by the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget — opening up further funds to restore proposed cuts and replace expiring federal relief funds.

“Against all odds, New York City’s post-COVID economy has proven to be durable and resilient,” said Finance Committee Chair Justin Brannan. “We maintain that the administration’s blunt cuts were never necessary in the first place, and we’ll be fighting for and expecting to see full restorations across the board, from 3-K, to CUNY to our libraries, to our cultural organizations, and everything in between.”

Council members called for $60 million for the city’s school food program — including $17 million to restore cafeteria staffing to pre-pandemic levels, among other items.

Earlier this year, budget cuts led schools to scrap popular cafeteria menu items, including student favorites like cookies, chicken dumplings, and bean and cheese burritos. The decision sparked a backlash from students and families, prompting the city’s Education Department to reverse course on some of those changes.

With federal relief funds set to dry up this year and the city’s schools facing a looming fiscal cliff of more than $1 billion, City Council members are seeking additional funding to protect programs and services propped up by federal dollars.

For example, council members called for $33 million in funds for the city’s Learning to Work program — a long-standing initiative that is currently supported by the expiring federal funds. The program, which pairs alternative schools with community organizations to help students get back on track to graduate, has been called a lifeline for high-need students who enroll in transfer schools and evening classes.

Council members also sought to replace expiring federal funds for preschool special education programs and services, community schools, school social workers and psychologists, restorative justice programs, shelter-based community coordinators, and more. In total, council members called for about $550 million in city funding to replace expiring federal relief funds, according to a press release.

Among other investments, council members called for an additional $9 million in funds for Promise NYC, a free child care program for low-income, undocumented immigrant families — which would bring total funding to $25 million.

The council’s budget response is a required step in the city’s ongoing fiscal planning process. Council members and the mayor must reach a budget agreement by the end of the fiscal year in June.

The mayor’s executive budget — the next milestone in the process — is due by April 26.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

NYC schools chancellor hints at reversal of hundreds of millions in preschool cuts

2024-03-18T21:11:10+00:00

New York City Mayor Eric Adams could soon reverse a major budget cut to early childhood education, schools Chancellor David Banks hinted Monday.

Adams previously announced $170 million in cuts from city funding to free early childhood education programs effective next fiscal year as part of sweeping citywide cuts in November and January.

On top of that cut from the city’s coffers, prekindergarten programs are due to lose one-time federal pandemic aid that expires this summer. Roughly $92 million in federal aid is going toward supporting this year’s 3-K program for the city’s 3-year-olds, and another $90 million is helping pay for special education programs for preschoolers.

The city is facing a total “fiscal cliff” of nearly $1 billion next year, and advocates have been sounding the alarm for months on the need to come up with new funding to replace those disappearing federal dollars.

At a City Council budget hearing Monday, Banks called the city cuts “extremely hurtful to the entire enterprise of early childhood,” and said he was “fighting like heck to get these cuts restored.”

Though he didn’t commit to anything specific, Banks said, “I have great confidence in the coming weeks we will have really good news around early childhood.” He added, “The mayor’s office, City Hall, feels the same way.”

Asked later in the hearing by Council member Jennifer Gutiérrez (D-Brooklyn) which specific funding streams he’s fighting to get restored, Banks named the $170 million city cut. He also cited the expiring $92 million in federal funding for 3-K this year. Deputy Chancellor Emma Vadehra mentioned the $90 million in federal money for preschool special education seats that will dry up after this year.

The early childhood cuts, if reversed, would be the latest item slashed by Adams in recent months to get restored thanks to what city officials describe as an improving budget picture.

Adams has also announced restorations of cuts to the police, fire, and sanitation departments, as well as a $10 million cut to community schools that partner with community organizations to provide extra support to families. More recently, the city promised to allocate additional funding to bring back popular food items that were cut from school cafeteria menus in February.

Adams had initially planned another round of city budget cuts in April, but canceled those cuts last month.

Critics of the cuts have long contended that they were never necessary in the first place, and that city officials were being overly pessimistic with their financial predictions to create more pressure on the federal government to boost funding for the city’s influx of migrants.

The cuts and subsequent reversals have created a whiplash that’s been disorienting even for seasoned budget watchers.

Early childhood education advocates have warned that the early education cuts could have devastating consequences and force the city to permanently close seats.

If the city comes up with money to replace the expiring federal money for 3-K and special education preschool programs, it would mark the city’s largest commitment yet to replace an education program at risk from the fiscal cliff.

So far, the city has only committed $80 million to keep Summer Rising, a free academic and recreational summer program, going this year. Promising to prop up 3-K and special education preschool funding after the federal aid expires would prevent significant cuts to seats and drastic pay cuts for preschool special education teachers.

Even if cuts are reversed, preschool program face challenges

City officials conceded Monday that some 600 preschoolers with disabilities are still languishing without adequate preschool seats, despite federal legal mandates and the city’s own promise to get every child a seat.

And even before this year, Adams had already curtailed former Mayor de Blasio’s plans to aggressively expand the city’s free 3-K program to make it universal. De Blasio’s vision was largely funded with one-time federal pandemic aid, raising questions about its sustainability, and when Adams took office, he seemed to be hobbling the program. Program providers complained of rising payment delays and lackluster outreach from city officials.

Adams administration officials have contended that they’ve simply been right-sizing the program, and that they still plan to be able to offer a 3-K seat to any family that wants one. They have also argued that the existing seats aren’t properly distributed, with some neighborhoods seeing lots of open seats, while others have much more demand than supply.

Deputy Chancellor Kara Ahmed, who oversees early childhood education, said the city has cut roughly 8,000 seats that weren’t being used and redistributed 7,000 to other programs to parts of the city where they’re more likely to be filled.

Making matters more complicated, officials said Monday they’re still waiting on the results of a $760,000 study commissioned more than a year ago from the consulting company Accenture mapping out the city’s preschool seat needs. Banks said he expects the Accenture report in early April.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Drama at NYC performing arts school over loss of its celebrated theater program

2024-03-13T22:17:29+00:00

The curtain is expected to close next month on a long-running acting program at a Manhattan performing arts school serving grades 6-12, due to a funding shortfall, the program’s education and artistic director told parents this week.

But students from the Professional Performing Arts School in Hell’s Kitchen want the show to go on and launched a GoFundMe campaign that raised more than $20,000 in less than 24 hours.

They’re hoping they can tap famous alumni, who include Alicia Keys, Britney Spears, Claire Danes, and Jesse Eisenberg. Already, Jeremy Allen White from “The Bear” shared the GoFundMe on his Instagram account (after texting a teacher there to make sure it was legitimate, a parent said).

For 13 years, the Waterwell drama program has worked with the Professional Performing Arts School, often called PPAS, offering conservatory-style acting classes led by professional actors: High school students take drama for two hours a day, five days a week; for middle school, musical theater classes run 1½ hours each day. (Waterwell’s co-founder is Arian Moayed, from “Succession.”)

Earlier this week, Waterwell’s education and artistic director, Heather Lanza, emailed PPAS parents and students, letting them know the program would wrap up April 12 and urged families to advocate on the program’s behalf.

She blamed the program’s early departure on citywide budget cuts, but the Education Department disputed that, saying that Waterwell was charging more from the get-go than the school could afford.

“We love the students dearly, and this has been unbelievably painful,” Lanza told Chalkbeat. “We deeply believe in this training model.”

Some of the students stay in the program for seven years and have gone on to Broadway or other professional roles. Whether the students want to be professional actors or not, learning through theater helps them develop into “empathetic human beings” and helps them tap into “the power of storytelling,” Lanza said.

Lanza told Chalkbeat that the organization’s budget was short by $102,000. Based on what the school told her in a meeting last week, she said, the funding shortfall was a product of the overall cuts in the city and were tied to a midyear adjustment to the school’s budget for the current school year. The principal told families this week that the school needed about $80,000 to save the program, parents said.

Education Department officials claimed that budget cuts were not to blame for the program’s gap, saying instead that the program’s work order was above what the school could afford, and this was communicated to Waterwell in December.

The school did lose money because of an enrollment dip. But that cut only amounted to about $20,000, according to a teachers union database. The school’s current roster is about 520 students, according to public data, down about 20 students from the year before.

“A rigorous theater arts program continues to be a priority for PPAS,” Education Department spokeswoman Jenna Lyle said in a statement. “The school will host end of year performances, and dedicated staff will continue to support students in their drama education through the end of standard academic year program, which ends on April 30, while the school sources a new partner for the next academic year.”

The school is committed to ensuring the theater program will remain strong even if Waterwell leaves next month. Teachers are willing to do “double time” and “step in and fill the gap if we can’t raise the money that Waterwell needs,” said Shawn Dell, the school’s PTA president.

“PPAS is one of a kind. It’s a unicorn. There’s nothing like it,” Dell said. “LaGuardia has DOE teachers that are seeking tenure. Our teachers are seeking Broadway. That’s why we love it.”

Students crushed by news, but elated Jeremy Allen White took notice

“This program brings so much joy to a lot of people,” Tennyson Artigliere, the seventh grader who launched the GoFundMe campaign, said on her way to dance class after the school day ended. “It really brings us so much joy to be able to do what we love to do.”

Tennyson launched the campaign after texting with friends in her group chat about how to take action.

They also immediately changed the group chat name from “PPAS peeps” to “S peeps,” saying that the removal of the theater program “took the ‘PPA’ out of PPAS.” Now it was just “the school,” the students joked.

Before the school day had started, she had tagged White, the “Bear” star, on Instagram, and when she got her phone back at the end of the day, she was ecstatic to see that he had shared the GoFundMe link in his Instagram story.

White wrote: “This is where I went to high school. It’s an incredible program with some incredible teachers. Please help IF YOU ARE ABLE. I have donated.”

His support felt meaningful. “These are the people that are going to be the future of entertainment,” Tennyson said of her classmates, “the next celebrities.”

Marcus Artigliere, Tennyson’s dad, felt frustrated that parents learned about the cuts only from the theater program and not the principal, who is in her first year at the school. But he beamed about his daughter’s drive to launch the fundraising campaign.

“As a parent, I’m really proud of her collective action,” said Artigliere, an education professor at Hunter College. “It’s a public school. We shouldn’t have to fundraise … but there is a lot of beauty in being scrappy and seeing how the kids are taking off.”

Current and prospective PPAS families worry about school’s future

David Glick’s daughter travels about 1½ hours from Staten Island to PPAS for this program, he said.

“I don’t have my daughter do a crazy commute to just do academics. She could go 10 minutes away for that,” he said of his seventh grader. “She’s got this amazing voice and is talented. She was thrilled when she got in, but she also has anxiety and ADHD, and it’s been really nice for her to have these small classes.”

The news about the program has also reached prospective PPAS families.

Sarah Muir, a parent of an eighth grader at Louis Armstrong Middle School in Queens, was delighted to learn last week that her son was accepted into PPAS, and the family is weighing it against an offer at the famed LaGuardia performing arts high school.

“It is distressing and concerning to have gone through the lengthy and arduous application process now to find that the school he will be attending may be radically different from the one he applied to,” Muir said. “The school’s core mission and identity as a performing arts school depends on this training.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC Education Dept. sues state over order to pay for charter school’s ‘inflated’ rent

2024-03-06T21:13:07+00:00

New York City’s Education Department is accusing a Staten Island charter school of “artificially inflating” its rent costs to collect more reimbursement from the city – and it’s taking the state education commissioner to court for greenlighting the arrangement, according to legal filings.

In a lawsuit filed last week in Albany Supreme Court, city lawyers allege that Hellenic Classical Charter School took advantage of a state law that requires the city to either offer charter schools space in city-owned buildings or pay for their rent in outside facilities.

The school leased space from a church in Staten Island and then turned over the lease to an affiliated group, which subleased the space back to the school at a price three times as high as what the school originally agreed to pay the landlord. The school then asked the city to reimburse it at the inflated rate, the suit alleges.

New York State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa is the subject of a new lawsuit from the city Education Department over her ruling in a dispute over charter school rental reimbursement.

The extra rental income was used to subsidize the costs of constructing a brand-new building for the school on the premises, city lawyers claim. Such costs, they said, aren’t covered by the rental assistance law.

The arrangement amounts to “self-dealing…in which the School in effect pays itself an artificially inflated sub-rent and pockets the difference,” city lawyers said.

Lawyers for Hellenic conceded that the dramatic rise in rent was driven by the cost of “improvements” on the facility, according to court documents. But Hellenic’s lawyer, Kevin Quinn, argued that the city has no right under the law to “second guess” the price of a charter school’s rent, and that the reason for the increase is irrelevant.

State Education Department Commissioner Betty Rosa largely agreed.

In an October ruling, she wrote that Hellenic’s financial arrangement was “certainly concerning,” but fell within the bounds of the law.

“That is the system the Legislature has created,” Rosa wrote. “Any change must come from that body.”

This instance, “is merely an exaggerated example of the goal of the rental assistance program: the public financing of New York City charter schools,” she added.

James Merriman, the director of the New York City Charter School Center, a group that advocates on behalf of charters, argued that, much in the way the public subsidizes the cost of public school construction, charters should be able to use rental assistance for the same purpose.

The Education Department’s lawsuit marks the first time the city has brought a legal challenge against the state Education Department over a charter rental dispute, according to a spokesperson from the city’s Law Department.

“There is no evidence that the Legislature intended” for the law to require the city to “cover what this charter school is seeking,” the spokesperson said.

Critics have flagged inflated rental costs for years

The city’s obligation to subsidize charter rents stems from a 2014 state law, passed as former Mayor Bill de Blasio took office. The legislation was meant to shore up protections for the publicly funded, privately run charter schools against a city executive viewed as more hostile toward charters than his predecessor, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The law compels the city to offer a new or expanding charter school space in a public school building or cover the cost of rent in an outside building up to a certain amount. If the rental costs are greater than 30% of what the city receives from the state for a charter school’s enrollment, the reimbursement from the city is capped at that level.

The state reimburses the city for 60% of what it pays for charter rental costs.

The city paid about $75 million for charter rental reimbursements in fiscal year 2023, after factoring in the state’s portion of the payments, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office. Year-over-year growth in the city’s total outlay on charter rental reimbursements has begun to slow as the city nears the state-mandated cap limiting the number of charter schools in operation, the IBO said. But the subsidy will likely continue to tick up in future years as rental costs rise and enrollment at charters increases overall.

Critics have for years alleged that some charter schools are taking advantage of the law by overcharging the city on rent and “self dealing.”

A 2021 report from the group Class Size Matters, which advocates for lower class sizes, pointed out several instances of charters renting space from affiliated organizations with subsequent sharp increases in rental rates.

The report cited an example of two Success Academy charter schools in Hudson Yards subleasing space from the network. In that case, the rent jumped from less than $800,000 in the 2019 school year to $3.4 million the following year, allowing Success to collect more than $3 million from the city in rental subsidies. (The report said Success owned the space, but a spokesperson said they rented it and then sub-leased it to the schools.)

Success Academy spokesperson Jessica Siegel said that even with that increase, the network has lost money on the lease because “facilities reimbursement has covered far less than our total costs including rent and the cost of the necessary renovations we had to incur to make the space safe and functional for learning.” She added that Success asked the Education Department for space in a city-owned building but was denied.

In Hellenic’s case, the school originally agreed to pay the landlord roughly $660,000 in rent during the 2021-22 school year for its Staten Island space. But the school subsequently transferred the lease to an entity affiliated with the school called “Friends of Hellenic,” which then sub-leased it back to the school at a price of over $2 million a year.

Quinn, the school’s lawyer, said using a “Friends Of” entity is a “common practice.”

In response to the 2021 Class Size Matters report, state Sens. John Liu (D-Queens) and Robert Jackson (D-Manhattan) and City Council member Rita Joseph (D-Brooklyn) sent a letter to city Comptroller Brad Lander asking him to audit the Education Department’s charter rental reimbursement payments to ensure they’re based on fair market value.

A spokesperson for Lander said the comptroller’s office couldn’t comment on ongoing litigation.

Leonie Haimson, the founder and executive director of Class Size Matters, called Hellenic’s arrangement “outrageous” and urged the state legislature to amend the rental assistance law “to disallow any self-dealing and ensure that any rents charged to DOE by charter schools are no more than fair market value.”

Rental reimbursement law draws renewed scrutiny

The rental reimbursement law has recently come up in conversations about how the city plans to comply with a separate state law mandating lower class sizes in many schools.

At a town hall in Brooklyn on Monday night, some parents pushed schools Chancellor David Banks on the possibility of moving charters out of public school buildings to clear out more space for district schools to spread out and lower their class sizes.

But Banks warned such a move would ultimately drive up the city’s expenses because of the rental reimbursement law.

“If I take a charter school and move them out of your building so that now you have more space for class size, I now have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent for that charter school,” he said. “Guess where that money is going to come from ...The funding that we use to pay for your music program and your art program.”

New York City is the only city in the state required to reimburse charter schools for rental costs – a fact critics have long seized on in arguments to repeal the legislation.

But other state legislators want to move in the opposite direction: State Sen. Luis Sepulveda (D-Bronx) and Assembly member John Zaccaro Jr. (D-Bronx) recently introduced legislation to expand the charter rental reimbursement law so it will also apply to charter schools opened before 2014.

Advocates and educators previously told the Bronx Times that charter schools that don’t receive the rental reimbursement have to divert significant chunks of their budget to covering rent and away from teachers and programs benefiting kids.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

NYC budget director blames cafeteria menu cuts on too many kids eating

2024-03-04T23:26:19+00:00

New York City slashed popular items like chicken tenders, dumplings, and cookies from cafeteria menus in February because too many kids were eating, a city official said Monday.

Jacques Jiha, director of the Office of Management and Budget, offered the surprising explanation at a City Council budget hearing in response to questions from Education Committee chair Rita Joseph pressing officials about why “high demand items are being swapped for heat-and-serve options.”

“Bear in mind, the city made some significant investments in school cafeterias,” Jiha said, referring to a $50 million initiative to upgrade middle and high school cafeterias to make them resemble food courts – a project explicitly designed to increase student meal participation.

“So what you end up with, you have a lot of kids hanging out in cafeterias now and eating more and more and more and more,” Jiha continued. “So therefore what they did was, they basically cut some of the items from the menu … because more kids are eating.”

A school food staffer told Chalkbeat in January that the items removed from the February menu were among the pricier offerings.

The menu cuts have already had significant effects – both on kids who were crushed to lose their favorite lunch foods and on manufacturers struggling with the loss of business.

Jiha claimed that the menu trimming was not the result of a budget cut. The $60 million in city funding slashed from the Office of School Food and Nutrition Services in November as part of a sweeping, citywide budget cut ordered by Mayor Eric Adams, was “swapped” for $60 million in new federal funding, Jiha said.

But critics say the city still hasn’t provided a satisfactory explanation for why the midyear menu reductions were necessary if the budget wasn’t cut.

“The City’s November 2023 budget documents included a clear $60 million cut to school food operations,” said Rachel Sabella, the Director of No Kid Hungry New York, in a statement. A budget update in January included the same figure, and the cuts to the February menu “followed soon after, removing higher-priced items that kids loved and that contributed to higher participation--like burritos, dumplings, and French toast sticks.

“If the cut has now been filled with federal revenue … we look forward to seeing the budget updated accordingly,” she added.

An Education Department spokesperson previously told Chalkbeat that costs went up because of a 9% increase in student meal participation compared to last year and rising expenses in unspecified other areas.

But food manufacturers who spoke to Chalkbeat in January said that’s not a convincing rationale for making major menu cuts in the middle of the school year, since the Education Department has significant power to set its own prices, and costs are largely set before the start of the school year.

And when Education Department officials were asked directly about the possibility of menu reductions in January, they appeared to blame the mayor’s budget cuts.

“We are going to have to cut back a little bit due to the [cut],” said Chris Tricarico, senior executive director of the Office of Food and Nutrition Services in a January meeting with the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council. “As all agencies had to reduce a little bit, we’re going to have slight reductions to the menu as far as choices.”

Jiha said the city is currently “modifying the budget and adding federal resources” to support school foods. But when pressed on why that wasn’t translating into the restoration of slashed cafeteria menus on the ground, Jiha said only that Joseph could “trust what I’m saying to you.”

An Education Department spokesperson didn’t respond to questions about if and when any of the axed items would return. There are some minor changes in the March school cafeteria menu compared to February, including the addition of mozzarella sticks as a daily backup options for food court cafeterias. But many of the big-ticket items axed in February like french fries, chicken tenders, cookies, and chicken dumplings, still don’t appear on the March citywide menu.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Summer Rising will face reduced hours this year. Here’s what NYC families should know.

2024-03-04T22:22:20+00:00

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Applications for New York City’s free summer programming opened Monday to all children in kindergarten through eighth grade.

But in the wake of budget cuts ordered by Mayor Eric Adams, middle schoolers will face significantly fewer hours of enrichment programming this summer.

Launched in 2021 with federal pandemic relief funding, the Summer Rising program was designed to help students readjust to in-person learning and expand summer school opportunities beyond children who were traditionally mandated to attend. The initiative includes a mix of academic instruction provided by Education Department teachers and enrichment activities supported by a network of community-based organizations.

Summer Rising will once again include up to 110,000 slots — and is open to all New York City children currently enrolled in grades K-8, including those who attend charter or private schools.

But there will be a few changes this year. The application process is starting about a month earlier, with placements announced in mid-April, to give caregivers more time to plan for the summer and arrange child care if necessary. And families will now apply using MySchools, the sometimes glitchy website that manages the public school application process from prekindergarten through high school.

The most significant change, however, concerns reduced hours for middle school students.

Here’s what you should know about this year’s Summer Rising program:

How does the Summer Rising 2024 application work?

Using the MySchools portal, families can rank as many different Summer Rising sites as they want — choosing from roughly 360 options across the five boroughs. The seats are not issued on a first-come, first-served basis, so families can apply any time until March 25.

In line with the admissions policy last year, some students will receive priority for summer slots. That includes certain children with disabilities, those who live in temporary housing or foster care, children who are behind academically, and students applying for Summer Rising sites that are housed in their regular school.

What is the schedule for Summer Rising, and when does it start?

For students in grades K-5, Summer Rising operates 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. from July 2 to Aug. 16.

For middle schoolers, Summer Rising will run from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. — two fewer hours — and will no longer operate at all on Fridays. The program for those children runs from July 2 to Aug. 8.

Some students with disabilities are entitled to year-round schooling and those programs operate during slightly different times. Children who attend schools in districts 1-32 generally attend summer classes from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. from July 2 to Aug. 12. Those who attend District 75 schools, which are for children with more significant needs, will attend 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. from July 3 to Aug. 13.

And those who attend programs for students with autism — including Nest and Horizon — attend 8 a.m. to noon from July 2 to Aug. 8.

Students with disabilities who attend school year-round have the option to attend the extended day enrichment programs operated by community organizations that run until 6 p.m. (or 4 p.m. for middle school). Interested families must apply through MySchools and students with disabilities in the categories listed above will receive priority for seats.

Why are there fewer hours for middle schoolers?

Summer Rising is one of a slew of programs initially funded with federal pandemic relief money that is now running out, forcing city officials to either find new funding to replace those expiring dollars or make cuts.

So far, Adams has done a bit of both. The mayor chose to keep the Education Department’s contribution to the program, which helps fund the academic portion of the day, using about $80 million in city money to replace federal dollars.

But the afternoon enrichment portion of the program is funded by a different city agency — the Department of Youth and Community Development. Adams cut $20 million of DYCD’s roughly $149 million contribution to Summer Rising, forcing reductions in programming for middle school children.

Some advocates worry that fewer hours, and the elimination of Fridays, will make the program less popular and hurt its quality.

“Friday was usually when they did field trips and things outside of the school building,” said Nora Moran, the director of policy and advocacy at United Neighborhood Houses, which represents community organizations that operate some of the city’s summer programming. She emphasized that community organizations are able to quickly restore hours if the city makes additional funding available.

“We’re certainly hopeful the mayor reverses his decision to shorten the program day,” she said.

How popular is Summer Rising in NYC?

In a city with few affordable child care options, Summer Rising has been quite popular. Last year, there were about 45,000 more applicants than available slots, officials said (though some of those children eventually won a seat).

Students generally spend their mornings on academic work and in the afternoon participate in enrichment activities, including art, science projects, and trips to cultural institutions. For elementary school children, the final week of the program is dedicated to enrichment activities and trips operated by community organizations.

Many parents have praised the program, noting it gives their children something to do other than expensive camps, watching TV, or spending countless hours scrolling the internet. But others have been disappointed and even pulled their children, citing boring assignments during the academic portion of the day, limited time outside, and few opportunities for field trips.

Here’s what parents told us about their Summer Rising experience last year.

What about students with higher needs?

Students with disabilities are supposed to continue receiving the services they need to access summer programming, such as health and behavioral paraprofessionals, and their schools must devise a “Summer Rising Accommodation Plan” before the program begins.

Still, not all services are available for the afternoon enrichment programming — such as paraprofessionals who help manage student behavior — and community organizations are instructed to provide support “as needed.” In practice, some advocates said community organizations aren’t always well-equipped to serve students with special needs, leaving some families to avoid the program entirely.

“The community based-organizations don’t necessarily have the knowledge, and skill, and staff to help support students with behavioral needs,” said Maggie Moroff, a senior policy coordinator at Advocates for Children, which helps students with disabilities navigate the special education system. “A plan from the school that is supposed to be put in place by the [community organization] leaves a whole lot of room for mistakes.”

Officials also noted that English learners will receive “instruction targeting language and literacy development to support them with grade-level content” during the morning sessions, including in small groups or one on one.

What’s the transportation situation?

Students who already receive yellow school bus service during the school year should generally receive bus transportation for Summer Rising. And students with MetroCards during the school year will continue to receive them for the summer.

But for students who ride the bus, there’s a catch: The city’s yellow bus service stops rolling at 3 p.m., so students who participate in the extended enrichment portion of the day until 6 p.m. (or 4 p.m. in middle school) will instead have access to a prepaid rideshare service.

A caregiver must accompany their child in the rideshare to and from the summer school site, which some advocates have criticized as inaccessible for working families who don’t have time to ride to and from a Summer Rising site at the end of the day.

“I think a lot of families opted to forgo the opportunity because they didn’t have a way of getting their child back home,” Moroff said.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Programs for high school students at risk of dropping out face ‘catastrophic’ funding cliff

2024-02-28T21:58:52+00:00

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After one of Clara Delgado’s students gave birth late last year, she quickly arranged a home visit.

A staffer at Downtown Brooklyn’s Young Adult Borough Center — one of the Education Department’s evening programs for students who are behind in credits or can’t attend school during the day — Delgado arrived with a counselor in tow, donated baby clothes, and made sure the student could log in to Google Classroom to complete assignments remotely.

Delgado hoped the message was clear: The school would do whatever it could to help the teen finish the two classes she needed to graduate.

But staff like Delgado — along with funding for about 3,000 paid work slots — could soon disappear from a network of Young Adult Borough Centers and transfer schools that collectively serve nearly 15,000 students who have struggled at traditional high schools, are behind in credits, and are at risk of dropping out. That’s because a bevy of counselors, social workers, and internship coordinators, are paid through a city initiative called Learning to Work, which is predominantly funded by federal dollars that will expire at the end of this school year.

Educators and advocates say the services provided through Learning to Work are a lifeline for high-need students who enroll in transfer schools and evening classes. Those students include those who have struggled to pass classes at traditional schools, are caught up in the criminal justice system, are parents themselves, or are living in temporary housing.

To help get those students back on track, Learning to Work pairs alternative schools with community organizations that provide extra staff who help ensure students show up to school, get connected to social services, and even help craft college and career plans. It also funds thousands of paid internships, which can give students valuable work experience and create an incentive to attend school rather than dropping out to support themselves.

“A lot of [our work] is social-emotional,” said Delgado, a program manager at Good Shepherd Services, a nonprofit organization that partners with the Brooklyn night program. “They need somebody to take that off their plate so they can be successful with the academics.” The student who gave birth earned a diploma last month and plans to enroll at the Borough of Manhattan Community College this fall.

If the program’s funding is cut, Delgado said it will be a blow for students who have already struggled with the city’s education system. “It’s just someone writing them off again – they’re getting another back turned on them,” she said.

Jobs for students and staff could be lost

Learning to Work has existed since 2005, unlike other programs funded with federal dollars that were intended to address the pandemic’s fallout, such as Saturday programming for students with disabilities or expanded summer school.

But the city began using federal money to finance most of the program two years ago. Nearly 70% of Learning to Work’s budget, or about $32 million, now comes from one-time federal pandemic relief funds, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office. (The program faced a 25% cut in 2020, but its budget has since returned to pre-pandemic levels.)

Without an infusion from the city, “on July 1 these young people lose their support system and lose money they’re paying their bills with,” said Michael De Vito Jr., executive director of the New York Center for Interpersonal Development, which operates three Learning to Work programs across Staten Island and Brooklyn. “This is also going to cause layoffs of hundreds of nonprofit workers.”

Ariana Rivadeneira, 22, said the paid work experiences helped her re-engage with school and ultimately earn a diploma. Before the pandemic hit, she took on a job working at a veterinary clinic to help her mother pay rent after her parents split up. She began missing school and fell behind academically.

But after switching to West Brooklyn Community High School, a transfer school, the staff helped line up paid work experiences and training, including solar panel installation. There was suddenly less of a tradeoff between school and work.

Ariana Rivadeneira, 22, graduated from West Brooklyn Community High School in 2023.

“I was able to focus and redirect my whole education path to school,” Rivadeneira said. She graduated a year ago and now works as an EMT.

The work experiences helped Rivadeneira and her peers “experience what life could be for them – not just school, not just this responsibility of, ‘you have to graduate,’” she said.

Transfer schools could be hit hardest

The previous mayor, Bill de Blasio, made the decision to use one-time federal funding to support the Learning to Work program, but it’s unclear how Mayor Eric Adams will proceed. Adams and schools Chancellor David Banks have made career education a centerpiece of their agenda, and many advocates hope city officials will see the program’s connection to that work.

Still, community organizations worry that the program is not on the city’s radar, as Adams said in January that he “had no clue of the extent of how many programs were being funded by stimulus dollars” until he was briefed by Banks. And while Adams has restored some initiatives that were funded with one-time federal money, there are many remaining programs that are competing for city dollars, including preschool for 3-year-olds.

“We constantly have to remind people that we even exist,” De Vito said. “It seems like the network [of alternative programs] at large is just an afterthought.”

The city has not made a final decision about the program’s future, Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull wrote in an email. “We are engaging with Learning to Work providers as we plan for the future and recognize the importance of this impactful programming for our city’s young people,” she said. “We continue to advocate to our state and local partners to identify new funding to sustain these programs after this year.”

But even if the funding is restored in the city budget, which is finalized in June, some staff are already heading for the exits, as workers realize that funding for their jobs is uncertain, De Vito said.

If the cuts go through, they could add to an existing funding threat to the city’s network of transfer schools, which serve older students who are off track to graduate and may face smaller budgets next year. Enrollment at transfer schools was roughly 12% lower last school year compared with pre-pandemic levels, while traditional high school rosters fell just 2%. Federal relief funding that kept school budgets afloat despite enrollment losses is also set to expire.

With the possible cut to Learning to Work, one Brooklyn transfer school principal said the consequences could be “catastrophic.”

The principal, who spoke on condition of anonymity, noted that the community organization that partners with the school and is funded by Learning to Work, helps students with everything from getting clean clothes to lining up a paid internship “so they don’t have to choose between school and earning a living.”

Without those efforts, the school would have to entirely rethink its approach. “From the beginning our school has been designed with a [community organization] partner – not just as an appendage,” the principal said. “You can’t tear off a chunk of your school and assume that there’s some way to replace it.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NYC students, advocates call for school-based restorative justice, mental health funding

2024-02-23T20:06:06+00:00

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During a lesson on the Black Lives Matter movement in her first year of high school, Lexi Greenberg was shocked to hear two students in her class making insensitive and offensive remarks.

“I left the lesson feeling angry and alone,” she said, noting she was the only Black student in the class. Lexi approached staff at Millennium Brooklyn High School, where just 14% of students are Black, and asked for the students to be suspended.

Instead, the school counselor and principal urged her to meet with the students before the school pursued any potential disciplinary action.

She was reluctant at first, but Lexi said meeting with her classmates helped her quickly realize they’d spoken from a place of ignorance, rather than harm. They were “extremely apologetic and regretful,” and after the meeting, they became her first friends in high school.

Lexi, now a senior, remains close with those students today, and is a founding member of her school’s Restorative Justice Action Team.

“None of the wonderful things that have happened to me in high school would have happened if I had pushed for suspension,” she said. “I made a choice to listen and see the people on the other side of the problem instead of burying myself in resentment and hate, and that opened me up to a whole new universe of joy and acceptance.”

Lexi is one of the dozens of students urging the city to increase funding for restorative justice — a philosophy rooted in providing students and staff space to talk through conflicts without resorting to more punitive measures. She shared her story Thursday as part of the “Dignity in Schools” coalition, a group of New York City students, families, educators, and advocates that are calling for the city to invest millions of dollars in restorative justice and mental health programs in schools, while diverting funding away from policing.

Roughly 30 students gathered in Manhattan at the YA-YA Network, a non-profit organization that promotes youth advocacy, to launch their new budget campaign. It comes amid broad fiscal concerns surrounding the city’s school system.

Though Mayor Eric Adams announced Wednesday that a planned third round of budget cuts will no longer be necessary, previous cuts have slashed more than $700 million from the Education Department’s budget for the next fiscal year. Meanwhile, the school system stands to lose hundreds of millions of dollars as federal pandemic relief funds will soon expire.

“What is unconscionable is that we’re in the midst of a youth mental health crisis,” said Tina Zeng, a Brooklyn high school senior and YA-YA student organizer. “Having these proposed budget cuts will have devastating impacts on restorative justice, student mental health … and so much more.”

As part of the campaign, the coalition is urging city officials to protect critical programs propped up by the federal funds, and make further investments in restorative justice programs.

In particular, the coalition called on the city to protect $21 million invested in restorative justice programs, $5 million that went toward mental health services, and $77 million that helped hire counselors, social workers, and mental health professionals.

Students also called for $75 million to support hiring school-based restorative justice coordinators at 500 high schools — increasing by an additional $55 million annually for three years — as well as $75 million to hire community members into positions that support schools, such as youth advocates, parent coordinators, paraprofessionals, community outreach coordinators, counselors, and social workers.

Under the investments the campaign is seeking, $10 million would also be put toward restorative justice training, curriculums, and other school-based resources and opportunities.

The coalition wants the city to redirect more than $400 million in school police funding to other school resources — calling for the city to stop all recruiting and training of new school police officers and end funding for new or existing student surveillance and scanning equipment. Students argued that police are ill-equipped to defuse tension and conflicts in schools, and that their presence disproportionately harms students of color and others from marginalized communities.

Tensions between students and school-based police officers can often be fraught, and advocates have long pointed to data showing Black and Latino students can be disproportionately subjected to police interventions in the city’s schools.

One student who spoke at the campaign launch said despite having school safety agents and a robust surveillance system on campus, it still took roughly 15 minutes for an officer to arrive when a fight broke out, and students had to work to defuse the situation in the meantime. When the students involved returned from suspension, the dispute continued.

Some schools have moved toward embracing restorative justice practices in recent years. Still, city data showed suspensions spiked during the last school year, returning to pre-pandemic levels.

Jenna Lyle, a spokesperson for the city’s Education Department, said in a statement that the department would continue to prioritize restorative justice.

“Education and safety is at the core of all we do,” she said. “We continue to prioritize our restorative justice work, as well as programs like Project Pivot, which puts additional funding in the hands of our schools to engage independently selected community organizations directly, made up of individuals from the very communities they serve and in accordance with participating schools’ needs.”

City Councilmember Rita Joseph, chair of the council’s education committee and an attendee of the Thursday campaign launch, encouraged students to continue their work and help sway her colleagues in City Hall.

“You already got me,” she said. “But we have 50 other people we need to bring on board.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Eric Adams cancels new round of budget cuts, but fiscal cliff for NYC schools looms

2024-02-21T23:06:13+00:00

New York City’s Education Department won’t see another round of city budget cuts this spring, Mayor Eric Adams announced Wednesday.

But the school system still stands to lose hundreds of millions of dollars of expiring federal aid by this summer unless city and state officials act quickly to replace it, advocates warned.

Adams said he will not move forward with a third round of planned budget cuts to city agencies, citing better-than-anticipated revenue and shrinking spending on migrants. The previous two rounds of cuts slashed a total of more than $700 million from the Education Department’s budget for next fiscal year.

Advocates celebrated Wednesday’s news, but warned it does nothing to reverse the massive cuts already coming through previous reductions in city spending and the approaching fiscal cliff of expiring federal aid.

“We are relieved that there is not going to be another round of cuts to the New York City Department of Education,” said Randi Levine, the policy director of Advocates for Children of New York. “But we are deeply concerned about the cuts that are currently being proposed. We need the city to make a substantial investment … to ensure that we don’t have devastating cuts to education programs come July.”

Among the programs that could be partially or fully eliminated when the federal money runs out: 450 new social workers, whose salaries are covered by the one-time federal aid; the city’s recently expanded free preschool program for 3-year-olds; and more than 100 “community schools” that partner with community organizations to provide extra support to families. Funding that propped up the budgets of schools whose enrollment fell during the pandemic is also drying up.

Advocates for Children is one member of the recently formed Emergency Coalition to Save Education Programs, which is calling on the city and state to come up with more than $1 billion dollars in this year’s budget to replace the expiring federal aid.

One hundred and sixty community groups signed onto a letter last September sounding the alarm about the fiscal cliff. There was some movement in January, when Adams announced $80 million in city funding this summer to help continue Summer Rising, the academic and recreational summer program that began during the pandemic.

But advocates say that’s only the tip of the iceberg – and worry that the urgency of the situation hasn’t yet sunk in for city and state officials.

In fact, at the January briefing announcing the Summer Rising funding, Adams said he “had no clue of the extent of how many programs were being funded by stimulus dollars” until schools Chancellor David Banks had briefed him earlier that month.

Here are some of the biggest programs currently funded by federal aid, and a glimpse at what could happen if the money runs out without a replacement:

Social workers and school psychologists on the chopping block

The salaries of 450 social workers and 60 psychologists were covered by nearly $80 million in relief money this year as part of a pandemic effort to bring mental health support to schools without full-time help.

The influx brought social workers to roughly 194,000 students who previously didn’t have a full-time social worker in their school, advocates estimate. If schools lose the federal money funding these positions, they’ll either have to scrounge up money from elsewhere in their budgets – an unlikely prospect with school budgets poised to shrink next year – or “excess” them, sending them to a central pool where they’d have to wait to get picked up by a new school.

One Brooklyn principal who hired a full-time social worker for the first time with the pandemic aid said it’s made an “enormous” difference to have a staff member who can focus on behavioral issues, freeing up other administrators to focus on academic needs.

“I’m very worried about what will happen if we lose her,” said the principal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “There is no way I can keep her unless the funds are replaced.”

Education Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle said the agency is “extremely grateful” for the relief money and is “working with the administration to identify new funding sources.” The department will “provide guidance to schools so they can appropriately plan for the upcoming school year,” she added.

$160 million to prop up school budgets amid enrollment losses

During the pandemic, former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration paused the normal process of slashing school budgets when enrollment fell, and instead spent $375 million in federal aid to keep school budgets steady, even as enrollment cratered.

Adams began tapering off that support in 2022, cutting $215 million from the “hold harmless” pot, which left it at $160 million. That $160 million will disappear next year unless city and state officials replace it – and it will come directly out of the budgets schools use to pay for staff and supplies. If a school’s enrollment increases next year, the accompanying budget bump might offset some of that loss. But if their enrollment shrinks or stays steady, they’ll feel the full effects.

An expanded preschool program

De Blasio used federal relief money to advance a long-standing goal of expanding the city’s free preschool program for 3-year-olds in the same way he built out the city’s heralded universal prekindergarten program for 4-year-olds.

The 3-K expansion has been rockier, with more empty seats – but it’s still brought free preschool to more than 20,000 new 3-year-olds since the start of the pandemic.

If the city’s current proposed budget passes unchanged, spending on the 3-K and pre-K programs will fall by $263 million next year, according to advocates’ budget analysis. About $170 million of those cuts come from the city’s own budget trims, which officials have said will only affect seats that aren’t currently filled.

But there’s also $93 million in federal aid for 3-K that could disappear next year. The city’s cuts alone could reduce the number of 3-K seats by between 9,000 and 15,000, according to projections from the Citizens’ Committee for Children. Even if the seats that get cut were empty, losing so much funding could make it impossible for some providers to keep their lights on at all, said Jennifer March, the Executive Director of the Citizens’ Committee for Children.

“It could have a detrimental impact on the fiscal viability of that provider long term,” she said.

The clock is ticking for other programs

There are many other critical programs paid for with federal aid, including 100 staff members working directly in homeless shelters to help students with transportation and other needs, and more than 100 new community schools that partner with nonprofits to provide social services and extra support to families. A recent effort to reduce the long-standing shortage of preschool special education seats is also in jeopardy.

There’s also precious little time for city and state officials to salvage those programs. The state’s budget deadline is April 1. Advocates say things are moving the wrong direction so far: A revision to the state’s funding formula is leaving the city Education Department with $130 million less than expected.

The city’s budget deadline is further out in June. But there’s a perhaps even steeper climb to reverse some of the $700 million in cuts Adams has proposed in recent months – while also coming up with new money to replace the sunsetting federal aid.

But advocates said the stakes are too high for lawmakers not to act.

“We are talking to everyone at both the city and state levels,” said Levine. “A parent who doesn’t have access to 3-K doesn’t care if they lost the seat because of federal, state, city funding … they care that they’re losing that seat.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Empty display cases, hungry kids, disrupted production: NYC’s cafeteria cuts send shockwaves

2024-02-06T18:57:31+00:00

The effects of New York City’s recent school food budget cuts are already rippling through city cafeterias and beyond, even threatening jobs at the manufacturer of the chicken dumplings pulled from February’s menu.

A $60 million November cut to the Education Department’s school foods division forced the agency to chop a number of popular items, including cookies, bean and cheese burritos, and roasted chicken, Chalkbeat first reported last month. Middle and high schools with cafeterias that resemble food courts lost chicken tenders, French fries, burritos, and grab-and-go salads – items that were previously available on most days.

New York City’s school system runs the largest daily food program in the country outside the military. It serves approximately 880,000 daily “free, nutritious, and delicious meals,” according to Education Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle, who downplayed the impact of the menu changes. She said the agency “will continue to work to prioritize student choice wherever possible.”

But the cuts were felt immediately by many students.

Alec Lopez, a 17-year-old senior at Urban Assembly Bronx Academy of Letters in the South Bronx, went to the cafeteria last week to grab the chicken tenders and French fries she usually takes only to discover that they weren’t available.

“I didn’t eat anything. I was like, ‘Ooh maybe I should get a salad,’ but they cut that out too,” she said. “For the rest of the day, we’re tired, we’re hungry, energy levels are so down and it makes everyone feel like crap.”

A container with veggie nuggets at Bronx Academy of Letters on Friday, Feb. 2, 2024 in Bronx, New York.

Previously full display cases sat empty, and the slim offerings on shelves contained meager portions, said David Garcia-Rosen, the dean at Bronx Letters.

“I’ve never seen that all school year,” he said, adding that some of the containers held what appeared to be just a handful of veggie nuggets.

At Urban Assembly Gateway School for Technology in Hell’s Kitchen, the recent menu cuts exacerbated long-standing issues with broken cafeteria equipment and food shortages. Parents and school officials have tried in vain for years to get busted display cases fixed, said Diane Tinsley, a parent of a senior and Parent Association president at Urban Assembly Gateway.

On a recent Friday afternoon, multiple broken display cases sat empty and unstocked, while only one was filled with hot food for a building with five schools and more than 2,000 students.

“I come in and it just looks like a desert,” Tinsley said. “This is child abuse.”

Food manufacturers feeling pain, too

The effects of the cuts are also spreading beyond school cafeterias. The city’s decision to yank major menu items midyear sent shockwaves through food manufacturers.

“We’re all just kind of frustrated and befuddled,” said Kirk Jaudes, chief operating officer of International Food Solutions, the company that produces the chicken dumplings for city schools. The company first found out about the change when a staffer noticed that the dumplings were missing from the Education Department’s February menu, he added. An Education Department spokesperson said vendors were notified on Dec. 19 and Dec. 22 of the changes.

International Food Solutions produces the dumplings exclusively for the city Education Department from a factory in Long Island that can churn out somewhere in the ballpark of 2 million servings a month, at a cost of around $1 a serving, Jaudes estimated.

But the Education Department’s abrupt decision to pull the plug is upending the company’s operations, Jaudes said, taking a bite out of revenue, slowing production, and forcing the company to consider layoffs.

“You could potentially have students in the New York City Department of Education whose parents are going to lose their jobs,” he said. The company, moreover, is still stuck with about $350,000 in leftover inventory that it can’t sell anywhere else because the product is reserved exclusively for New York City schools. Company officials are trying to work out a deal to distribute it in city schools, but said they haven’t gotten anywhere.

“Unless there’s major policy changes, we won’t be doing business with New York City” any more, Jaudes said. “We can’t take that risk.”

An Education Department spokesperson noted that the agency asked all vendors whose items were removed from the February menu for a “voluntary price reduction,” and that International Food Solutions declined. But Jaudes said his company had already agreed to the price suggested by the Education Department before this school year, and had even offered an additional discount, also before the start of the school year, on top of that.

“We didn’t have any margin to provide further cost reductions,” he said. The Education Department spokesperson said nine vendors offered price reductions, which are currently being reviewed by city officials to see if any items can be added back to the menu.

The dumplings are, by many accounts, one of the most popular items served in schools.

At one Manhattan elementary school, 31 out of 46 fourth- and fifth- grade students surveyed last week by the school’s principal said dumplings were the best lunch meal, the administrator said.

And in a recent Reddit thread about the school menu cuts, the top comment reads, in part: “I work in the schools. The dumplings are popular and most kids eat them.”

Reasons for budget cut raise questions

The circumstances surrounding the school food budget cut are still somewhat murky. The $60 million cut to school foods was part of a larger $550 million budgetary blow to the Education Department that Mayor Eric Adams said was prompted by increased spending on the wave of migrants who have arrived in the city over the past year-and-a-half.

But budget documents appear to suggest that the cut to school foods from the city’s budget was going to be offset by federal food revenues that “exceed budgeted amount.” Administration officials told the City Council that the cut to city school food funds wouldn’t affect the division’s overall operating budget because it would be offset by federal money, according to a council source.

“It’s mystifying why schools are seeing these removals of menu items,” the council source added.

An Education Department spokesperson confirmed that the city is indeed replacing the missing city money with federal funds, and said the overall $580 million budget for school foods is still higher than what the city spent last year. Costs are up this year because of increased participation compared to last year and increases in unspecified “other areas,” according to the spokesperson. Labor contracts prevent the Education Department from laying off workers, “which meant a reduction in food options,” the spokesperson added.

Some observers worry that the cuts could have long-term implications for the city’s school food program.

The number of city students eating lunch on an average day, while higher than last year, is still down significantly from the 2019-20 school year, according to city data.

If even fewer students eat lunch because of the menu changes, that could lead to lower reimbursement from the federal government, which in turn can lead to cuts that further diminish the quality of the food, in what Jaudes called “a never-ending cycle to the bottom.”

The Education Department spokesperson said, “The current menu still provided high demand items, a decrease in meal participation is not expected.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Millones en beneficios de comida por la pandemia podrían caducar el mes que viene

2024-01-31T17:57:05+00:00

Read in English.

Millones de dólares en beneficios de comida por la pandemia en Nueva York que no se han usado podrían empezar a caducar el mes que viene, ya que la fecha límite para que las familias los usen se está acercando.

Los fondos — conocidos como Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer, o P-EBT— se enviaron a todas las familias de las escuelas públicas de Nueva York en varias rondas durante los últimos cuatro años. El propósito de los fondos es ayudar a cubrir los costos de las comidas que de otro modo serían recibidas en la escuela.

El año pasado, el estado distribuyó múltiples rondas de fondos, incluyendo $120 por niño para el verano de 2023, y por lo menos $391 por niño para el verano de 2022 y el año escolar 2021-22. (Los fondos de este último pago podrían ser de hasta $1,671 por niño según las ausencias relacionadas con el COVID o los días de aprendizaje remoto durante el año.)

Ahora, el último pago está por caducar para las familias que no los han usado todavía. En octubre, al menos 90,000 beneficios en la ciudad no habían sido canjeados por las familias, lo que significa que al menos $35 millones estaban en riesgo de caducar.

David Rubel, consultor de educación que ha seguido de cerca los beneficios de comida, teme que miles de familias perderán dentro de poco tiempo los beneficios que quizás no sepan que tienen.

“Imagínate que mañana por la mañana leamos que los principales programas de distribución de alimentos perdieron la mitad de su presupuesto”, dijo. “En realidad, esa es la magnitud de lo que estamos hablando”.

Las preocupaciones de Rubel surgen en parte por los datos que pidió y obtuvo bajo la Ley de Libertad de Información del estado, y que los funcionarios estatales confirmaron. Los datos mostraron que para los beneficios P-EBT emitidos para el verano de 2021, casi 600,000 estudiantes en todo el estado nunca canjearon el dinero.

Eso significa que más o menos un 27% de los más de 2.2 millones de estudiantes que recibieron los beneficios nunca los usaron — un total de beneficios sin usar de aproximadamente $222 millones.

A Rubel le preocupa que el estado no haya tenido suficientes actividades para informar a las familias sobre cada ronda de los fondos. Dijo que les ha pedido a los funcionarios estatales que soliciten al gobierno federal una enmienda a los plazos del programa.

La Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance del estado, o OTDA, que supervisa el programa P-EBT, dijo que el vencimiento de los fondos se basó en estatutos y regulaciones federales.

“La fecha de caducidad no se puede extender”, dijeron los funcionarios en una declaración.

En otros estados, los funcionarios han enmendado sus programas P-EBT para efectivamente extender la fecha límite para que las familias usen sus beneficios. En California, por ejemplo, los funcionarios permitieron que los hogares pidieran el restablecimiento de sus beneficios si se habían caducado sin que las familias los usaran.

Los funcionarios de Nueva York, sin embargo, dijeron que no tenían planes de pedir una aprobación federal para enmendar el programa P-EBT.

Esto es lo que las familias deben saber:

¿Cuándo empezarán a caducar los beneficios?

Los beneficios de P-EBT caducan automáticamente 274 días después de la última vez que se usaron, es decir, unos nueve meses después. Más del 60% de los beneficios del verano de 2022 se distribuyeron a las familias en mayo pasado, lo que significa que los fondos de quienes no los hayan usado todavía s empezarán a caducar en febrero.

Cuando las familias utilicen los beneficios, el plazo para caducar empieza a contar desde 0 nuevamente y tendrán otros 274 días antes de que los fondos corran riesgo de vencerse.

¿Cómo las familias pueden reemplazar sus tarjetas?

Las familias que hayan perdido su tarjeta P-EBT pueden obtener una de reemplazo llamando al 1-888-328-6399.

¿Por qué algunas familias no están usando los fondos?

Desde que comenzó la pandemia, la OTDA ha emitido más de $6,300 millones en beneficios P-EBT, de los cuales cerca del 60% han ido directamente a las cuentas existentes de hogares que ya estaban recibiendo beneficios del Programa de Asistencia Nutricional Suplementaria (SNAP). Otras familias recibieron los fondos en tarjetas P-EBT emitidas por el estado.

El estado mantiene información detallada sobre los beneficios en su sitio web y opera una línea de ayuda: 1-833-452-0096.

Los funcionarios de la OTDA le dijeron anteriormente a Chalkbeat que han llevado a cabo una extensa campaña de información para el público y han trabajado con grupos de defensa para ayudar a crear conciencia sobre los beneficios de comida. El Departamento de Educación del estado también envió mensajes sobre los beneficios a todos los distritos escolares locales, añadieron los funcionarios.

Las familias con números de teléfono válidos registrados en su distrito escolar también deberían haber recibido un mensaje de texto cada vez que había beneficios nuevos disponibles, según los funcionarios estatales.

Algunas familias, sin embargo, dijeron que nunca recibieron mensajes de texto, y otras han tenido dificultades para tener acceso a los beneficios.

“Debemos lograr un 100%”, dijo Angela Trude, profesora de la NYU que ha estudiado el acceso a comida y beneficios del gobierno. “Queremos que todo el mundo aproveche los beneficios”.

Trude dijo que ella ha trabajado con familias que suponen falsamente que usar los beneficios podría restarles dinero a otras familias más necesitadas, o que el gobierno en algún momento les pedirá que devuelvan los fondos.

Es crítico combatir estos conceptos erróneos, dijo ella, y a la vez comunicar que todas las familias deben utilizar los beneficios.

“Si estas familias sienten que les están quitando a otras, entonces en vez de no utilizarlos, pueden comprar alimentos no perecederos y donarlos a organizaciones comunitarias y despensas de alimentos”, añadió Trude.

Rubel cree que casi todas los beneficios caducados del desembolso del verano de 2021 ocurrieron entre familias que no son beneficiarias del SNAP, ya que los hogares del SNAP recibieron los beneficios en sus cuentas existentes y pudieron seguir gastando como de costumbre para utilizarlos.

Para las familias que han podido aprovechar los beneficios, los defensores han dicho que pueden tener enormes consecuencias. Rachel Sabella, directora de No Kid Hungry New York, dijo que los fondos del P-EBT “pueden ser la diferencia un niño que pasa hambre o uno que tiene una comida sana y nutritiva”.

“Sabemos que las familias están sufriendo — 3 de cada 4 nos han dicho que ahora ha sido más difícil poder comprar alimentos que en 2022 — así que esperamos que todos los hogares con derecho al P-EBT aprovechen este beneficio”, dijo en una declaración. “Sabemos cuán importante es dar a conocer estos fondos antes de que caduquen, y les pedimos a las familias a que revisen sus cuentas de EBT y tengan sus tarjetas a la mano”.

Nueva York necesita más programas de información, dice un experto

Wendy De La Rosa, profesora adjunta de marketing en la Wharton School de la Universidad de Pensilvania que ha estudiado los beneficios públicos, dijo que Nueva York y otros estados deberían hacer más para comunicarse de forma eficaz con las familias.

Usar mensajes de texto para avisarles a las familias sobre sus beneficios es un método “fundamentalmente defectuoso”, según De La Rosa.

“Las estafas están por las nubes, y todos los expertos en seguridad nos dicen que tengamos miedo”, dijo. “¿En qué mundo pensaríamos que un solo mensaje de texto — que con frecuencia proviene de un número desconocido — va a lograr que más gente lo reciba y capte?”

Agregó también que, en el caso de estudiantes con vivienda inestable, los números de teléfono que están en los archivos de los distritos escolares pueden tener errores o no estar actualizados.

“Tiene que ser un mensaje de texto, y un email, y una carta, y llamadas telefónicas, aparte de realmente determinar ¿A qué padres no hemos llegado?”, dijo De La Rosa. “Y luego hay que hacer un esfuerzo concertado para llegar a ellas y que todos estén informados”.

Algunas familias también responden mejor a cierto tipo de comunicación cuando se trata de beneficios. Lograr que las familias sientan más de los beneficios son suyos puede hacer que los aprovechen más, dijo De La Rosa. Es más probable que las familias usen beneficios presentados como un derecho, que los presentados como un programa de ayuda.

Programa permanente de beneficios de comida de verano a la vuelta de la esquina

A pesar de sus preocupaciones, a De La Rosa le satisface que Nueva York está entre los estados que han optado por adoptar un programa permanente federal de beneficios de comida en el verano. En todo el país, 9.5 millones de estudiantes que hubiesen sido elegibles para los beneficios probablemente se quedarán sin ellos este año, ya que por lo menos 12 estados no quisieron participar en el programa.

“Cuando se pone en ese contexto — que los niños de familias en algunos estados están pasando hambre porque los legisladores no han querido adoptar esta política — es evidente que Nueva York les lleva ventaja”, dijo ella.

Julian Shen-Berro es un reportero que cubre la ciudad de Nueva York. Comunícate con él enviándole un email a jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

When schools assign substitutes the wrong status, the error suppresses their pay

2024-01-31T10:00:00+00:00

This story was published in partnership with New York Focus, a non-profit news site investigating how power works in New York state. Sign up for their newsletter here.

This is the second installment in a two-part series reported with support from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. You can read the first part here.

When the Queens public school where she was working assigned Antonietta Auriemma to seven classroom sections, she realized something was wrong.

Between January and June 2023, Auriemma, a substitute teacher, filled in for two different teachers on long-term leaves of absence, on top of extra classroom periods as needed.

According to her handbook, she should have been classified as a “long-term sub” — and qualified for the requisite pay and benefits.

In the nation’s largest public school system, most substitute teachers work day-to-day, filling in for short-term absences at a fixed daily rate of roughly $200. But amid a teacher shortage made worse since the pandemic spurred educators to flee in droves, more and more New York City schools have come to rely on substitutes on longer-term assignments. Because they are more like regular teachers, these long-term subs are supposed to earn around $100 extra per day, which can add up to roughly $25,000 more per year, according to the teachers union. Some accrue sick time, vacation time, and even get health insurance.

Auriemma wasn’t receiving any of that.

“I was basically a full-time teacher,” Auriemma told New York Focus. “I was lesson planning for these classes, entering grades for these students, speaking to parents for parent engagement, all while making the [lower] sub pay of $200 a day.”

For years, subs like Auriemma have been underpaid for their long-term services — a violation of the New York City Department of Education’s teacher contract with the United Federation of Teachers, or UFT.

Interviews with 10 former and current substitute teachers or substitute paraprofessionals suggest that the practice is systematic and widespread across the city, and that since the pandemic began, violations may have increased. In a Sept. 11, 2023, UFT executive board meeting, Mark Collins, the union’s grievance director, stated that schools paying substitutes at an incorrect rate is “probably the most common grievance we have in the city.” A UFT spokesperson confirmed that it is one of the top grievances in the union.

Nearly all the interviewed substitutes, whose labor spans multiple city boroughs, said they knew of schools that underpaid subs because of misclassification. Five of them said they had filed grievances related to these issues; three have won back pay as a result, while the others’ grievances are still pending resolution.

Those who don’t grieve their wage shortages may choose not to because they’re unaware of the contract provisions. Others, because of their relative precarity: Many subs depend on the work as their primary income and cannot miss days for fear of falling behind on bills. Six subs described a culture of retaliation that might get them fired or suddenly removed from the classroom if they complain.

“Once you file, you’re essentially blacklisted at a school.”
JOE DIODATO, SUB WHO FILED A LABOR GRIEVANCE

Even if subs get to stay in the same school, they might get moved from classroom to classroom to preserve their place in the arcane classification system that keeps pay down. And when teachers get shuffled, students suffer.

Beth Ellor, who retired from full-time teaching in 2009, has subbed regularly since. She said she covered a class whose students blamed themselves for their lack of a regular teacher.

“They said, ‘Everybody hates us. Nobody wants to stay with us. We are a terrible class,’” Ellor recounted. Later, she found out that another substitute teacher had previously worked 27 days with that class before being moved to another assignment.

Ellor believes it was done to prevent that substitute from achieving the higher-paying status.

Asked about the problem, Education Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle acknowledged the “critical support” that subs provided during the pandemic.

“Thanks to temporary stimulus funding, we were able to provide additional financial support to schools to take on the additional costs of hiring more substitutes and have worked with the UFT and individual employees to address any outstanding pay issues from this period,” Lyle wrote in an email.

She declined to comment on the widespread, sometimes intentional practice of misclassifying subs, which existed before the outbreak of COVID.

In the education system, it’s not uncommon for subs to fall through the cracks, said David Bloomfield, an education law professor at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York Graduate Center. “Those cracks widened during the pandemic,” he said. “This seems like a situation that hasn’t been given adequate attention by either the union or the central administration.”

Pay scale for subs varies by assignment length

The teachers union contract establishes various letter-coded “statuses” of service to which a substitute teacher can be assigned.

The most common sub classification, “O-status,” is for day-to-day subs who cover short-term absences. Subs are assigned “Z-status” or “Q-status” when working full-time for schools, filling in for longer-term teacher absences or vacancies. Those subs receive higher pay and limited benefits that are unavailable to O-status subs. The Education Department’s payroll system automatically grants the higher-paying Z-status to substitutes so long as they teach a class without an absence for 30 days.

When subs are told to miss a day, it resets the clock.

“What happens is a lot of principals know that [subs] get paid more money” under higher tiers of sub service, said a former school payroll secretary, who asked to remain anonymous because she still works in the school system and fears retaliation. “They don’t want to pay them the higher status, so they’ll tell a sub, don’t come in on this day, for whatever reason, and that defers them back to the old status so they can’t get paid more money.”

“You want to use money to hire more teachers, more supplies, or to get air conditioners. Nobody even thinks of subs.”
JOHN WENK, FORMER PRINCIPAL IN MANHATTAN

The substitutes who spoke to New York Focus described a widespread practice of either denying qualified substitutes Q- or Z-status, actively preventing subs from qualifying, or displaying incompetence in staffing subs under the appropriate status.

“It’s a known thing that principals have tight budgets … and [forcing a missed day] is one way they cut corners in saving money,” said the former payroll secretary. “It doesn’t even get discussed.”

When Joe Diodato subbed for a semester at an elementary school in the Bronx, it found a way to underpay him — without forcing a missed day.

Instead, according to documents Diodato shared with New York Focus, the school periodically changed the code in the payroll system associated with his work assignment. The action incorrectly made it seem like he wasn’t teaching the same class over the course of his employment, a condition required to earn Z-status.

Diodato didn’t learn about the higher-paying sub statuses until a couple months into the job. When he asked his payroll secretary about them, they said he didn’t qualify.

“Every day I came in I documented what I did,” Diodato explained. “I saved my classroom Zoom meetings, I saved my Google Classroom posts, my parent engagement. Everything that showed I did the job of a classroom teacher, I saved.”

At the end of the year, he used his records to file a 187-page grievance. He eventually won nearly $6,000 in a settlement with the Education Department.

Joe Diodato won nearly $6,000 in a settlement with the DOE. He’s now a full-time teacher.

Diodato intentionally waited for the school year to run out before filing his grievance. “Once you file,” he said, “you’re essentially blacklisted at a school.”

Now a full-time teacher, Diodato runs a private Facebook group for substitutes and a blog about the city Department of Education. He believes that more substitutes have likely been filing grievances on long-term status issues since the pandemic began, when the DOE increased its reliance on subs. But most violations, several subs explained, likely go unchallenged.

Without the higher pay and benefits, subs often quit mid-assignment, Diodato said.

Several subs who spoke to New York Focus requested anonymity because they were pursuing full-time teaching positions at their schools. They described a common belief that contesting their status would endanger their chances of full-time employment — or get them fired from their temporary positions.

One substitute, who requested anonymity, subbed regularly at a high school for seven years until she tried to claim increased benefits and wages.

When the sub challenged a principal’s reasoning as to why she could not earn Z-status, “she fired me on the spot,” the sub said. “She said, ‘You are on my last nerve … Yeah, I lied to you. I know what the rules are … but I’m the principal and I make the decisions, and you’re just a sub.’”

John Wenk, a former principal of a Manhattan high school, said that retaliation against subs is unsurprising behavior for some principals and can be done with impunity.

A principal, he explained, is free “to get rid of the sub for any reason whatsoever.”

“I’ve seen that happen,” said the former payroll secretary. But in most cases, she said, subs don’t bring the issues up in the first place. “They need a job. They need money,” she said, “so they’re not going to rock the boat.”

A UFT spokesperson acknowledged that most subs grieve pay violations after their assignment has finished, presumably out of fear of retaliation. They emphasized, however, that subs are already covered by contractual and legal anti-retaliation rules, and that the union is trying to add further protections so they are comfortable filing grievances as soon as the violation occurs.

Pointing fingers at Education Department red tape

Although it falls on individual school payroll secretaries, principals, and administrators to carry out pay violations, some argue that the DOE’s bureaucracy is to blame.

The money to pay substitutes comes from the DOE central administration, but once schools receive it, principals can use the money however they please. Operating under strained resources, with dozens of budgetary items to attend to, a principal may be incentivized to use the money intended for subs on resources deemed more necessary.

“You want to use that money to hire more teachers, or for more extracurricular activities, more supplies, or to get air conditioners,” Wenk said. “Nobody is thinking about this problem. Nobody even thinks of subs.”

Joe Diodato in the South Bronx. Though he's now a full-time teacher, he still runs a Facebook group for subs.

Bloomfield believes principals and individual schools are not equipped to deal with the problem in the first place.

“Principals have neither the expertise nor the budgetary acumen to make the substitute puzzle pieces fit together with all the other pressures they’re under,” he said. “It’s therefore incumbent on the central administration, both the DOE and the city, to offer clear guidance consistent with union contracts and other legal provisions to assist in filling these positions.”

A UFT spokesperson said the union has been working to shift the burden of ensuring correct pay from the subs to the Education Department. The spokesperson referenced an agreement the union won in recent contract negotiations to establish guidance to re-train and educate administrative staff on substitute hiring — to ensure correct classification, pay, and health coverage.

But some subs told New York Focus that they attribute the ubiquity of pay violations in part to the UFT’s inadequate representation of substitutes.

“While [UFT reps] seem to be helpful and they want to be that point of contact for when situations need to be escalated, a lot of them are just at a loss,” said a former substitute teacher in Bushwick, Brooklyn, who requested anonymity.

“We disagree that UFT reps are ‘at a loss,’” a teachers union spokesperson wrote in a statement. They noted that any substitute can receive immediate representation for a grievance.

Bloomfield sees the problem as baked into the DOE’s treatment of its workforce.

“Just that very term ‘substitute’ reeks of second-class citizenship in the personnel constellation,” he said. “They’re an afterthought.”

Teddy Ostrow is a journalist from Brooklyn. He was the host of The Upsurge podcast and his work has appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, In These Times, and elsewhere.

Cookies, chicken tenders, dumplings: NYC cost-cutting axes faves from February school menu

2024-01-24T20:00:23+00:00

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Mayor Eric Adams’ school budget cuts will soon hit New York City students square in the stomach.

A $60 million November cut to the city’s school foods budget is forcing the Education Department to thin out next month’s school cafeteria menu by removing a host of pricier items, including student favorites like cookies, chicken dumplings, and bean and cheese burritos, according to an email from a school food official obtained by Chalkbeat.

Additionally, at the growing number of middle and high schools with cafeterias that resemble food courts (part of an initiative expanded by Adams to improve the lunchroom experience), students will no longer get chicken tenders, grab-and-go salads, and French fries – items that are currently offered multiple days a week as options for kids who don’t want that day’s main course.

Other items that will be taken out of rotation in February include roasted chicken thighs and legs as well as guacamole and salsa, the message said. Breakfast meal kits, French toast sticks, bagel sticks, ciabatta bread, and sweet potato oatmeal muffins will also be scratched.

In a recent meeting with parent leaders, Chris Tricarico, the Education Department’s head of school foods, acknowledged that the menus would be impacted by the budget cuts, but promised “minimal changes.”

But to many parents and kids, the cuts feel anything but bite-sized.

“To me, that’s like 75% of the menu,” said Jose Santana, a 17-year-old senior at Dr. Richard Izquierdo Charter School in the Bronx, which offers the same menu as district schools. French fries were “definitely one of my favorites,” he said. “For that to be gone is huge.”

Without the chicken tenders, fries, and grab-and-go salads, the remaining daily backup options at high schools with food courts are pizza, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cheese sandwiches, and hummus and crackers, according to the February menu. There will also still be a daily salad bar, but Santana said he doesn’t see many students use it.

“At least the pizza is still there,” he said.

Clarissa Kunizaki, a 15-year-old sophomore at Brooklyn Technical High School, was similarly shocked to hear the list of menu items getting chopped.

“The chicken thighs and legs were the best option for lunch in my opinion, since the other hot meals usually do not taste great,” she said. The bean and cheese burritos were also “pretty good and very popular among other students,” she added.

Menu cuts come after school food investment

Adams and schools Chancellor David Banks pledged $50 million a little over a year ago to turn 80 more school cafeterias into food courts – a change advocates have contended can increase the number of students who eat. More than 100 school buildings serving 140,000 students now have an enhanced cafeteria, according to the Education Department’s school kitchens dashboard.

Adams has made school food a major priority, launching an initiative to serve vegan offerings on Fridays and a recent program to bring professional chefs into schools to help develop new recipes.

But with the variety in the food court lunchrooms getting significantly diminished next month, some students wondered whether more teens would turn to other options.

“I see every day a good group of students that just don’t eat school lunch,” Santana said. “I wonder if this budget cut will cause students to spend more money” outside schools at nearby bodegas or delis.

“I personally don’t want to waste five to 10 dollars every day,” he added.

Liz Accles, the executive director of Community Food Advocates, a nonprofit that led the charge to expand the city’s cafeteria enhancement program, said in an email she’s “hopeful that the funds will be restored … given the unprecedented commitments that the Mayor and Chancellor have made in creating an innovative and leading edge school meals program.”

An Education Department spokesperson said items that don’t appear on the February menu may still be added back in subsequent months.

“Our school food team has worked diligently to respond to budget reductions without sacrificing nutritional standards and with a continued focus on student choice,” said spokesperson Jenna Lyle. “Daily options, including a salad bar, continue to be available, and our young people continue to benefit from enhanced cafeterias, halal certified kitchens, plant-powered Fridays and other school food programs.”

Students and parents concerned about more school food waste

At many high schools and even some middle schools, students are allowed to leave campus for lunch and buy food at local eateries.

But for younger students, there’s no option to leave school – it’s either eat what’s on the school menu, or bring food from home.

Ana, a 6-year-old student at P.S. 289 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, said she’s “going to be sad” if the cookies disappear from her school menu.

“They took things off the menu that I really enjoy,” said Mia Ueoka, a 9-year-old fourth grader at P.S. 295 in Brooklyn. “My favorite thing on the menu was the cheese and bean burrito and the chicken thighs. I actually felt like I could get protein from it.”

Ueoka’s dad, Elton Dodson, worried the changes could exacerbate equity issues, “with more affluent parents able to pack lunches to compensate for this policy atrocity.”

News that the chicken dumplings are falling victim to the budget cuts also hit hard for some students and adults.

Jake Jacobs, a middle school art teacher in the Bronx, allows students to eat lunch in his classroom, and gets a first-hand look at what they like and what they don’t based on what ends up in his trash can.

“They throw the vast majority of it away,” he said. But the dumplings were one bright spot. “They get double portions and they’re fighting over them,” he said.

The $60 million cut to school foods was part of a total of roughly $550 million chopped from the Education Department budget in Adams’ November budget. Adams ordered all city agencies to trim their budgets by 5% as part of what he described as a bleak fiscal situation driven by increased spending on services for migrants and asylum seekers.

But Adams significantly revised that financial forecast in January. He reversed $10 million of the November cuts to the Education Department, but still announced $100 million in new cuts set to take effect next fiscal year. Additional cuts to the police, fire, and sanitation departments were put on hold.

Officials have emphasized that they have done everything possible to keep the cuts from directly affecting services. But several parents said the cuts to the school menus would have an immediate impact on their kids.

“Our schools have already seen after-school programs decimated, arts programs eliminated,” said Dodson, the parent at P.S. 295. “Now they won’t have adequate fuel for the day.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Eric Adams boosted pay for special ed pre-K teachers. Now they face deep cuts.

2024-01-22T11:00:00+00:00

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In his first year on the job, Mayor Eric Adams vowed to fix a glaring inequity in the city’s prekindergarten system. His predecessor’s universal free pre-K program, widely celebrated as a national model, did not provide a seat to every child with a disability, despite a legal requirement to do so.

“The previous ideas of universal 3-K and pre-K did not account for children with disabilities — it was just wrong,” Adams told reporters in December 2022. The mayor promised every child with a disability would have a placement the following spring.

To meet that goal, officials began pouring roughly $134 million into private community organizations that operate the vast majority of the city’s preschool special education seats. It was a shot in the arm for providers that have struggled to keep their doors open due to years of anemic funding and staff churn, allowing them to raise teacher salaries by thousands of dollars to bring them closer to their public school counterparts.

But despite the funding influx, more than 1,100 preschool students with disabilities languished without a placement at the end of last school year. And this coming spring — a year after every child was supposed to have a seat — the Education Department anticipates needing between 866 to more than 1,400 additional seats, according to a new analysis of city data by Advocates for Children, a nonprofit that helps families navigate the special education system.

The problem may soon get worse. The funding Adams used to boost preschool special education programs flowed from one-time federal pandemic relief money that will expire in June — and city officials have not committed to replacing it. Providers say that could lead to a spate of classroom closures, leaving even more children with disabilities without placements at a key developmental stage.

“At some point, I’m going to tell my staff the money that we said was here is not here anymore,” said Jolene Gunther-Doherty, program director for The Guild for Exceptional Children, which operates a special education preschool program in Brooklyn. The additional city funding helped her program boost some teacher salaries from $48,000 a year to just over $68,000 a year, raises that would be reversed if the funding is not renewed.

“I may not get all the resignation letters the next day, but I might get them [in] mid-July or the beginning of August,” she added. “That’s when you begin to say you can’t keep the doors open.”

Teacher recruitment remains a challenge even with higher salaries

Preschool special education programs have long been the most neglected part of the city’s early childhood system.

The state provides a significant chunk of the providers’ budgets and officials approved flat or anemic funding for many years, below increases for traditional public schools (officials approved more generous increases during the last two years). As a result, teachers in the sector are often paid tens of thousands of dollars less than their peers in other schools, leading to high turnover and vacant classrooms, providers said.

Community organizations that operate general education preschool seats, the cornerstone of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s universal pre-K program, faced a similar funding disparity. After years of advocacy, those providers won big raises for their educators that brought them closer to their public school peers. But the special education teachers were left out, cementing their status as the lowest paid teachers in the city despite serving a high-need population.

Adams’ plan was designed to help fix that problem, providing extra funding to 86 providers to boost salaries closer to the minimum wages enjoyed by public school teachers, lengthen their school days from five hours to 6 hours and 20 minutes to match the district’s preschool schedule, and provide a slew of training and support.

The money is helping operators like HeartShare, which runs four preschool special education programs across Queens and Brooklyn. The organization lengthened the school day and increased many teacher salaries from about $50,000 a year to $68,652 a year, bringing them closer to the starting salary of certified teachers with a master’s degree in the city’s public schools. Teacher assistant wages increased to about $35,000 annually.

Carol Verdi, executive vice president of education services at HeartShare, said raises helped keep staff from leaving and enabled her to hire teachers for two classrooms that had been sitting empty because she couldn’t find anyone to run them.

“For retention, it was great,” Verdi said of the funding boost. “For recruitment, it helped a little bit.”

But strong incentives for teachers to work elsewhere remain. Under the new contract negotiated by the city’s teachers union, public school educators recently notched raises, leaving those in community-based pre-K classrooms below the new minimums. And for teachers with years of experience, they can earn thousands more by jumping to a public school.

Even with the recent salary boost for community organizations, Verdi still has seven classrooms she can’t find teachers for despite plenty of demand from families. “Our phone rings off the hook for seats,” Verdi said. “There are children out there in need.”

Sema Atilgan, who has worked at HeartShare for roughly two decades, said she has often considered leaving and briefly took a job at a public school in 2006. But she loves working with preschool students with disabilities, especially the feeling when students arrive with limited speech skills and leave the program speaking whole words.

“That gives me a lot of not only excitement to go forward ... but just gratitude,” said Atilgan, who has worked as a teacher and special education coordinator at the organization’s preschool program in Howard Beach, Queens.

Sema Atilgan, a long-time preschool special education teacher, is facing a pay cut this summer that may prompt her to quit.

But her salary would rise by more than $30,000 a year if she left for a public school teaching position, an enticing boost. Plus, she’d have a more generous benefits package and a summer break; preschool special education teachers in programs like HeartShare work year round. Instead, she’s facing a pay cut of about $3,700 this summer, which would bring her salary below $70,000 annually. That could be the final straw that pushes her into another job.

“If they give us a decrease in our salary there will not only be an uproar but also a mass exodus,” she said, adding that she works a side job on Sundays conducting evaluations for Early Intervention services to help make ends meet. “Who gives money and tries to take it back?”

The temporary nature of the funding took several providers by surprise, especially given Adams’ framing of the new money as a “historical leap forward” that would ensure every child with a disability has a preschool seat.

“We would have advised our providers to really seriously think about this unless the [Education Department] had a plan how to fund it” in the future, said Chris Treiber, who represents preschool special education providers through the InterAgency Council of Developmental Disabilities Agencies, an advocacy group. “If this funding ends, our teachers become the lowest-paid teachers in New York City again.”

Largest gaps are in NYC’s neediest neighborhoods

When the city fails to find a seat for a preschool student with a disability, they often sit at home, or wind up in a program that can’t provide intensive support and services, such as speech therapy, listed on a student’s learning plan.

The impact on the city’s youngest students is significant. A lack of special education services early on can lead to more significant learning deficits later — and increased costs for the city. The gap in seats this coming spring is projected to be highest in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, covering a swath of the South Bronx and central Brooklyn, including Brownsville and East New York, according to the Advocates for Children analysis.

“We need to hear a plan for how the city will provide a seat to every child who needs one this year,” said Randi Levine, the policy director at Advocates for Children. “The possibility of 1,400 seats being needed at the end of this year is extremely alarming.”

Nathaniel Styer, an education department spokesperson, said the city exceeded its goal of adding 800 seats by the end of last school year, mostly by helping providers raise salaries to recruit educators for classrooms that were sitting vacant. Still, those additional seats were not enough to meet demand, and officials have not detailed any new efforts to meet the projected gap this spring.

“We expanded access and increased pay for this critical sector at a time when it was suffering due to underinvestment and difficulty hiring staff,” Styer wrote in an email, pointing to “the extremely low base pay rate” offered by the state. “As the need continues to grow, we continue to pivot and shift.”

Bronx mom Diana Benavides struggled to find a special education preschool seat this year for her son Liam, who has autism. The 4-year-old attended a general education preschool program, which couldn’t provide all the support he needed this year, including speech therapy. Plus, his class of 17 students proved overstimulating, and he became much more withdrawn, she said.

“He’s more hesitant to go to school [and] has more separation anxiety,” Benavides said. After securing a new learning plan in November that called for a special education program with a class size of 12, she struggled to find a seat.

Benavides spent hours tracking down and calling roughly 20 programs. “It’s almost like a part-time job just trying to find that information and following up with the schools,” she said. She ultimately found just one program in Manhattan that could meet Liam’s needs, including speech and occupational therapy services on site.

Liam started at the new school this month, though Benavides worries about other children who are languishing at home or whose parents don’t have time to conduct their own exhaustive search.

“The need is just growing, especially coming out of the pandemic,” she said. The lack of seats, she said, “is going to have generational impact.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Eric Adams cuts $100 million from Education Department, despite partial reprieve

2024-01-17T00:12:06+00:00

A new round of budget cuts announced Tuesday won’t hit New York City schools as hard as Mayor Eric Adams initially outlined, but will still add up to more than $100 million for next fiscal year, including further cuts to early childhood education.

Adams said last fall that the Education Department, like other city agencies, would have to trim its budget by 5% of the city’s contribution in January, following a previous 5% cut in November.

But during Tuesday’s announcement of the preliminary budget, Adams said the city’s fiscal situation has significantly improved since last fall, thanks to higher-than projected revenues and lower-than-projected spending on supporting the influx of migrants and asylum seekers.

As a result, several city agencies including the Education Department got full or partial reprieves from this month’s 5% cut. New cuts to the Education Department totaled about 0.6%, according to budget officials.

Still, the Education Department will face more than $100 million in new cuts starting next fiscal year, on top of the $600 million in cuts announced in November.

The new cuts include $50 million from the city’s prekindergarten and 3-K programs. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio dramatically expanded the free program for the city’s 3-year-olds using an infusion of one-time federal pandemic aid, but 3-K struggled to fill the new seats. Adams already announced in November a $120 million cut to the early childhood education budget next year, and the new $50 million cut outlined Tuesday could involve eliminating unfilled seats, according to budget documents. Budget officials said Tuesday that about 30% of 3-K seats are unfilled.

Those reductions represent “the biggest cuts to early childhood in more than a generation,” said Gregory Brender, chief of policy and innovation at the Day Care Council of New York, an organization that represents roughly 200 child care centers and other programs. “When you look at the magnitude, it’s hard to not see it having a drastic effect on services for children and families.”

Brender acknowledged that some seats are unfilled, but argues the city should be doing much more to fill them, especially given the high cost of child care and the city’s broader affordability crisis that is driving some families away.

The new cuts also include $51 million in reduced spending on non-staff costs in some central offices, according to budget officials. They didn’t elaborate on what those cuts will entail.

Advocates have raised alarms that a smaller Education Department budget could affect a range of day-to-day services. Hundreds of fewer staff on hand could mean it will “take longer for immigrant students to get a school placement, for students who are homeless to get a bus route, and for students with disabilities to get services,” Kim Sweet, executive director at Advocates for Children, said in a statement.

Additionally, though the city’s Education Department is expecting to chip in $80 million to run Summer Rising — which had largely been funded through federal COVID relief dollars — the popular program will still see a big cut. The Education Department runs the morning instruction while the Department of Youth and Community Development oversees the afternoon enrichment, which is run by community based organizations. The city is calling for a $20 million cut from DYCD’s budget for the program.

Aside from Summer Rising, the preliminary budget offers no other commitments to use city money to replace expiring federal pandemic aid – leaving the fate of hundreds of social workers, staffers supporting homeless students, and other programs up in the air.

“At a time when we have a youth mental health crisis, record-high student homelessness, systemic violations of the rights of students with disabilities, and an increase in newly arrived immigrant students enrolling in our schools, we cannot afford to roll back these important programs,” Sweet said.

Overall cuts to Education Department less than expected

Adams attributed the rosier fiscal picture to “responsible and effective management,” including previous cuts that helped balance the budget as well as the city’s new policy limiting shelter stays for migrant adults and families. That directive, which forces people staying in shelters to either reapply for space in a different shelter or find an alternate housing arrangement, has slowed the pace of migrants entering the shelter system, Adams said.

In the days leading up to Tuesday’s preliminary budget release, Adams had reversed several of the cuts announced in November, including a $10 million cut to community schools, citing the improving fiscal conditions.

But critics have contended that the budget situation was never as bleak as Adams claimed, and have accused the mayor of implementing unnecessarily draconian cuts to ramp up the pressure on the state and federal governments to increase aid to the city.

“Setting your house on fire and then putting it out doesn’t make you a hero,” Ana Maria Archila and Jasmine Gripper, co-directors of the New York Working Families Party, said in a statement.

Adams’ preliminary budget announcement came the same day that Gov. Kathy Hochul released her own budget plan, which includes $2.4 billion in aid to the city to provide housing and other basic services to migrants.

Adams said the city is still reviewing Hochul’s budget. He floated the possibility of canceling another round of budget cuts that’s supposed to come in April if aid from the state is sufficient.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Hochul proposes more than $800 million funding increase for NY schools, 4-year extension of mayoral control

2024-01-16T19:03:49+00:00

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Gov. Kathy Hochul has proposed a more than $800 million increase in funding for the state’s public schools, while also calling for a four-year extension of New York City’s polarizing mayoral control system.

The proposals came Tuesday as Hochul presented her $233 billion 2025 state budget, building on the hundreds of policy initiatives announced last week in her State of the State address. Her budget proposal also set aside $10 million for teacher training to support a statewide literacy initiative that Hochul hopes will encourage schools to adopt new curriculums.

The governor’s call to extend New York City’s centralized school governance structure is in some ways unsurprising. She advocated for the same extension in 2022, though lawmakers eventually approved only a two-year extension and tasked the state’s Education Department with compiling a report on how effective the system has been.

But her support for mayoral control comes just months before the release of that report, and follows a series of public hearings in New York City where the status quo has been hotly contested. Scores of educators have flocked to the hearings to call for the system to be revised or overturned, citing grievances with the educational policies of Mayor Eric Adams and his predecessors.

Outside of the education budget, Hochul’s proposal also called for $2.4 billion to provide shelter and other basic services to migrants and asylum seekers — including providing humanitarian aid to New York City. That funding would draw $500 million from the state’s reserves, Hochul said. She also proposed millions to support mental health programs and services.

Hochul’s budget proposal marks the start of negotiations with lawmakers over how the state should allocate its funding in the next fiscal year, which begins in April. During a press conference after her budget presentation, Hochul affirmed to reporters that she would not consider raising income taxes to increase spending on schools or other issues, regardless of what lawmakers propose.

Here are the education highlights from Hochul’s budget presentation:

Increase to school aid, though smaller than previous years

Hochul wants to spend $825 million more on the state’s schools — a 2.4% funding jump from last year’s budget. That increase would bring the state’s total education tab to more than $35.3 billion — the highest level of state aid in history.

New York City would receive $13.3 billion under the proposal — a funding increase of roughly $341 million, or about 2.5%, according to figures released by the state.

The bulk of the spending jump comes from a proposed $507 million increase to Foundation Aid, the state formula that calculates how much funding each school district receives and sends more dollars to higher-need districts. Lawmakers committed to fully funding the formula for the first time in 2021, with districts seeing the additional funding phased in over three years.

The proposed increase to Foundation Aid was driven largely by inflation, but came as a smaller jump than previously anticipated.

Hochul’s budget proposal included two changes to Foundation Aid, according to the state’s budget director, Blake Washington. The first would alter how the formula accounts for inflation, shifting to using a 10-year average rate in calculations. It would also modify a provision that prevented districts who saw enrollment drops from losing money.

“Seventy-five percent of the districts that would experience a change under this recommendation have lost more than 20% of their pupil count since the Foundation Aid formula was adopted,” Washington said.

Hochul’s Tuesday proposal represented a more modest increase in school funding than in recent budgets — and less than the $1.3 billion increase that the state’s Board of Regents called for last month. Last year, for example, the state budget increased school aid by $3 billion.

“As much as we may want to, we are not going to be able to replicate the massive increases of the past two years,” Hochul said in her budget presentation. “No one could have expected the extraordinary jumps in aid to recur annually.”

An additional $20 billion had been funneled to schools over the course of the pandemic between federal and state aid, Hochul said, noting that K-12 enrollment had declined over the past decade.

In a statement, Alliance for Quality Education, a school funding advocacy group, questioned the governor’s decision to change the Foundation Aid formula, noting the budget proposal contained $475 million less in school aid than previously anticipated.

“We agree there needs to be an update to the Foundation Aid formula, but it must be a process involving the State Education Department and engaging communities, with the goal of more accurately capturing students’ growing needs, not as a penny-pinching budgeting strategy,” said Marina Marcou-O’Malley, the group’s interim co-executive director. “What now remains to be seen is which districts the nearly half a billion dollars that we expected to see in the Governor’s proposal for schools were taken from.”

Hochul’s proposal also comes as the city’s schools and districts across the state face the end of billions of dollars in one-time federal COVID relief funds, which are set to dry up in September.

Kim Sweet, executive director of Advocates for Children of New York, urged the state to commit further funding to support school districts that have relied on those funds to prop up essential programs.

“New York City alone is spending around $1 billion per year in expiring federal funding to pay for 450 school social workers, 3-K expansion, legally mandated preschool special education programs, 75 shelter-based community coordinators, community schools, 60 psychologists, bilingual programming, literacy initiatives, and more,” she said in a statement. “While we appreciate that the Governor is proposing to increase overall education funding, this moment in time demands more.”

Call to extend mayoral control

With the current New York City school governance structure set to expire on June 30, Adams will return to Albany this legislative session to make his case for retaining control of the city’s schools. With Hochul’s budget proposal Tuesday, it appears the governor remains the mayor’s ally in that effort.

Her budget called for a four-year extension of the current school governance structure, which gives the mayor the power to select the schools chancellor and appoint a majority of members to the city’s Panel on Educational Policy, or PEP, which votes on major policy proposals and contracts.

But that system has faced heavy critique at public hearings held by state education officials across four boroughs in recent months. Speakers who have called for the current system to be amended have repeatedly asked for further checks and balances to be placed on the mayor’s power, particularly when it comes to the PEP.

At a hearing in the Bronx last month, Naveed Hasan, one of five PEP members elected by the city’s parent councils, alleged his own role on the panel was “a farce.”

“The majority of the members on the PEP are appointed by the mayor and never act independently, always approving whatever City Hall finds politically expedient,” said Hasan, who represents Manhattan. “My role on the PEP is rendered meaningless under a rubber-stamp panel under mayoral control.”

Meanwhile, defenders of the current system — like schools Chancellor David Banks — have argued it creates accountability by centralizing decisions. They say it represents an improvement over the previous system, which relied on a fractured and sometimes corrupt collection of school boards across the city.

If enacted, the proposed four-year extension would represent the longest one-time extension of mayoral control since former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s time in office. Though the system has been renewed regularly (with some tweaks) over the past two decades, former Mayor Bill de Blasio repeatedly failed to secure the lengthy extension deals that had been given to his predecessor. (Bloomberg received extensions of six and seven years.)

In a statement Tuesday, state Sen. John Liu, a Queens Democrat who chairs the Senate’s New York City education committee, criticized the governor’s decision to weigh in on mayoral control in her budget proposal.

“School governance and whether mayoral control should be continued or replaced by a more effective system must be informed by the [state Education Department] study,” he said. “It’s simply premature and senseless to lump mayoral control in with the state budget.”

Regardless of how the city’s school governance structure moves forward, Liu previously told Chalkbeat that lawmakers should seek to establish a more permanent system this year.

Reevaluating it at two- or four-year intervals is “destabilizing for the school system,” he said, adding, “There needs to be more certainty in the eyes of educators as well as families.”

Higher education, swimming instruction, and other initiatives

Hochul’s budget proposal also earmarked millions of dollars to support several policy initiatives that would impact the state’s young people.

It provides more than $200 million in new, recurring funding for state- and city-operated college campuses, commits $150 million to creating equitable opportunities for swimming instruction, and invests millions of additional dollars across multiple mental health initiatives.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Recipe to help school budgets? NYC considers chopping bake sale restrictions

2024-01-12T22:53:40+00:00

Bring back the bake sales!

That’s one idea New York City education officials are weighing to help schools make up for the impact of steep budget cuts, according to a recent letter from Deputy Chancellor Kenita Lloyd to principals.

Education Department officials are considering relaxing a more-than-decade-old rule that restricts what food can be sold on school grounds and limits PTA bake sales with unapproved foods to once a month — a rule originally intended to cut access to unhealthy foods.

Waiving the rule would give schools “greater flexibility to conduct fundraising activities more frequently, thereby offering a vital resource in these financially stringent times,” Lloyd’s message said.

Parent leaders came to Education Department officials with the idea of relaxing the bake sale rules during an October meeting of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Committee.

Randi Garay, a Brooklyn parent and member of the advisory committee, noted that schools were previously issued a waiver from the fundraising rules to raise money for humanitarian relief in Haiti.

“Due to the budget cuts…our schools are now in crisis,” she said. “Parent associations and parent teacher associations would like to step up.”

But the Thursday letter from Lloyd left a sour taste in the mouths of some principals.

“I did a little math,” said one Manhattan principal who spoke on the condition of anonymity. With budget cuts projected to exceed $2 billion by spring, the principal estimated, each of the city’s roughly 1,600 public schools would have to raise more than $1.3 million to offset them.

“This is a real ‘let them eat cupcakes’ kind of moment,” the principal said.

“It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, frankly,” added a Brooklyn principal.

Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull said, “We value the health and nutrition of our students, while welcoming the diverse perspectives of our families.” The agency is gathering feedback from principals, but no final decision has been made on if or how the rules will change, she said.

Like anything that involves PTAs, the proposal raises equity questions. Parent groups across the city’s segregated school system have wildly varying fundraising capacities, with some raising over $1,000 per student and others reporting no revenue.

“If each school is left to their own devices, the financially privileged districts continue to leverage their PTAs to bring them more,” said a third principal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Elton Dodson, PTA president at P.S. 295 in Brooklyn, said his school would likely take advantage of the additional freedom to offer more bake sales.

“A penny here, a penny there is better than nothing,” he said.

But his school community has parents with the time and resources to coordinate, stock, and staff the bake sales, and customers with enough disposable income to spend freely on the tasty treats – an advantage he acknowledged other schools may not have.

An Education Department spokesperson countered, however, that some parents suggested “that more flexibility would help schools that have historically struggled to fundraise.”

Reconsidering a longstanding rule

The bake sale regulation that Education Department officials are considering waiving dates back to 2009 — part of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s public health push to limit the availability of unhealthy foods and beverages.

The rule, which generated a healthy dose of controversy when it was introduced, limited what foods could be sold on school grounds to a pre-approved list, cutting out homemade goods like cupcakes and brownies.

Some parents and City Council members argued at the time that bake sales were a useful fundraising tool amid a previous round of budget cuts.

An amendment to the regulation issued in 2010 extended the hours that students could sell pre-approved snacks, and allowed PTAs to have one fundraiser a month with non-approved foods. Money raised by PTAs can fund school supplies, extracurricular activities, and the salaries of “supplemental” staff but can’t pay the salaries of teachers in core academic subjects.

Now, officials say they want to further relax the bake sale rules and are soliciting feedback from school leaders.

“As we navigate the challenges the possible upcoming budget constraints, it’s heartening to witness the proactive and innovative approaches our parent leaders are adopting,” Lloyd wrote. “In line with these efforts, we are currently considering an important initiative that could provide additional support to our school communities.”

Repealing rules that were meant to cut down on unhealthy foods in schools would be a curious turn for the administration of the famously health-conscious Mayor Eric Adams, who has touted his efforts to introduce vegan foods into school cafeterias.

Elena Tate, a Brooklyn parent and elementary school PTA president, said offering a few more bake sales would likely help the school’s bottom line. But she said that the concerns about limiting sugary foods that propelled the initial restrictions are still present for many parents.

“Some people do want to keep them to once a month or get rid of them” for health reasons, Tate said.

Adams announced roughly $550 million in budget cuts to the Education Department in November, and additional cuts are expected in January and later in the spring, reaching a potential total of more than $2 billion, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute. The city also reinstated a policy of clawing back money midyear from schools with enrollment shortfalls.

For schools like Dodson’s, those cuts have had real impacts. The school almost lost its music program – until the PTA ponied up $70,000 to save it, he said.

“We shouldn’t have to have three extra bake sales a month to fund our music program,” he said. “That being said … if this is what we have to do, this is what we have to do.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

NYC says it won’t move forward with tens of millions in cuts to District 75 schools

2024-01-11T22:27:06+00:00

New York City’s Education Department is pledging not to move forward with tens of millions of dollars in budget cuts to District 75 programs for students with significant disabilities – but school staffers say they’re still getting mixed messages about the cuts.

Staffers at multiple District 75 schools said last month that their principals were instructed to cut $1 million or more from their budgets as part of citywide budget cuts ordered by Mayor Eric Adams. The planned cuts totaled roughly $97 million across the district and would have forced schools to slash spending on extracurriculars, supplies, and paraprofessionals, people familiar with the discussions said.

Following an outcry from school staffers, parents, and advocates over the planned cuts, Education Department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer said earlier this week “we can confirm that there are no school-based cuts happening to D75.”

Another Education Department spokesperson denied that there was a “change in course” and insisted that District 75 schools were simply asked to review their budgets to ensure they aligned with enrollment, a “recurring practice for all schools.”

“We are working with district leadership to ensure this understanding is clear for all principals,” the spokesperson added.

But school staffers said they are still getting conflicting messages, and news of the reversal hasn’t yet trickled down to some schools.

Jo Macellaro, a teacher and union chapter leader at P.S. 186X in the Bronx, the city’s largest District 75 program, said the school’s principal is “under the impression that they are still happening.” The principal didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Another District 75 administrator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the reversal of the cuts has not been communicated to their school either.

Tameka Solomon, the chapter leader at P.S. 352X, another Bronx District 75 program, meanwhile, heard from her principal that the cuts are “on hold.”

The vague communication and confusion surrounding the cuts has left some worried that District 75 school budgets could still be vulnerable.

“In this top-down approach to school governance, there is very little that trickles down to actual schools,” said Paullette Healy, a parent of a District 75 student and long-time advocate. “Until I see it in writing, I still believe our students with disabilities are in jeopardy of losing their services because of these cuts.”

From the start, the specifics of the cuts have been mired in confusion.

In budget documents released in November, only $3 million a year in cuts was listed for District 75.

But staffers at four schools subsequently told Chalkbeat that their administrators were instructed by the district leaders to make far steeper cuts, effective immediately. The staffers added that their schools are not normally subject to big mid-year cuts, and pointed out that enrollment is up across the district.

The $97 million figure was communicated by District 75 Superintendent Ketler Louissaint in a meeting with principals, according to people familiar with the discussions.

News of the cuts drew outrage from staffers, parents and advocates.

One administrator warned that cuts to the school’s paraprofessional budget could pose safety risks for students with autism who are prone to run out of classrooms and buildings with no notice and need full-time monitoring by dedicated aides. That risk was underscored last week when an 11-year-old boy with autism ran out of his District 75 school in downtown Brooklyn and managed to board a train to Long Island. He was found four hours later unharmed.

Some advocates said the Education Department’s commitment not to enact District 75 school cuts was a positive step.

“We are relieved that what was rumored around cuts to the district serving those students isn’t currently in the cards and that, for now, the expertise the district offers should remain intact,” said Maggie Moroff, the senior special education policy coordinator for Advocates for Children. “Hard times can’t be an excuse for cutting services to those students who need support the most.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

School funding, mayoral control, class sizes: Education issues to watch in Albany’s new session

2023-12-22T18:52:09+00:00

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With New York state’s legislative session set to begin in January, lawmakers are preparing to tackle a slate of contentious issues that could hold serious ramifications for New York City students.

The fate of the city’s school governance structure will once again be up for renewal, pushing Mayor Eric Adams to make his case in Albany for continuing mayoral control.

School funding may also play a major role in lawmakers’ discussions, as some education officials have called to overhaul the state’s school funding formula — and as New York City and other districts grapple with a looming fiscal cliff, with federal COVID relief funds expiring in the fall.

School safety initiatives, updates to the state’s learning standards, and other legislation likely appearing during the next session may also impact New York City students.

Here’s a look at some of the biggest education issues lawmakers could tackle:

Mayoral control in the hot seat again

After a two-year extension, mayoral control is set to expire on June 30, and legislators will need to decide whether and how New York City’s school governance structure should change.

Mayoral control — which consolidates power over the city’s school system in the hands of its mayor — has been regularly extended over the past two decades, but has faced some tweaks along the way. Under it, the mayor has the power to choose the schools chancellor and appoint a majority of people to the city’s Panel on Educational Policy, or PEP, a city board that votes on major policy proposals and contracts.

A forthcoming state Education Department analysis of mayoral control, which solicited public comments as part of its review process, will be key to discussions of how the city should move forward, said state Sen. John Liu, a Queens Democrat who chairs the senate’s New York City education committee.

Whether lawmakers seek to continue mayoral control or adopt a new school governance structure, Liu said the city needs a more permanent system, noting that reevaluating it at two- or four-year intervals is “destabilizing for the school system.”

“There needs to be more certainty in the eyes of educators as well as families,” he said. Another critical consideration, he added: “Mayoral control should transcend whoever the mayor happens to be.”

Though public hearings have featured fierce criticism of the current system, some observers aren’t expecting sweeping changes.

David Bloomfield, a professor of education, law, and public policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, expects mayoral control to largely continue, with possible changes to lessen the mayor’s degree of control, like potentially granting additional oversight or power to City Council members or the city’s elected parent councils.

“It’s hard to imagine at this point what a radical change would look like,” Bloomfield said.

Other large cities have also grappled with their school governance structures in recent years. In Chicago, where mayoral control of schools was established in 1995, the city will transition to a fully elected school board by 2027.

Debate continues over school funding formula

Several years ago, in a major victory for state education officials and advocates, lawmakers committed to fully funding Foundation Aid, the formula that sends extra money to high-needs districts such as New York City. Since then, the conversation has shifted toward how to update the formula itself.

While the state already sends more money for schools with high-need students, the Board of Regents recently called for more than $250 million to revise the formula, proposing to update how students in poverty are counted, among other changes. The Regents have also called for $1 million to conduct a longer term study on how the formula can be improved.

State Sen. Shelley Mayer, a Democrat who chairs the senate’s general education committee, said she supports a cautious approach. She is in favor of funding further study, but hopes to better understand what potential changes would mean for school districts across the state before taking more definitive action.

“We have to know both how much it would cost the state, and also who would get less money than they currently get,” she said.

Expiring federal relief funds will dominate discussions

Both Liu and Mayer expect the looming fiscal cliff to play a major role in budget discussions during the next legislative session.

In recent years, about $7.7 billion in one-time federal pandemic aid has padded the city Education Department’s budget, helping to maintain critical initiatives like expanded preschool and summer enrichment programs. The funds have also helped schools hire social workers, psychologists, bilingual educators, and shelter coordinators, who have helped newly arrived migrants navigate the city’s school system.

But that money will expire in September, leaving many of those initiatives in jeopardy.

(Separately, Adams has directed the city’s Education Department to cut nearly $550 million from its budget, with further budget cuts still expected.).

Advocating for additional education funding as the state develops its budget will be her organization’s top priority, said Randi Levine, policy director at Advocates for Children, a group that supports the city’s most vulnerable students.

“We need the state to step up and help to save some of these important programs,” she said. “All options need to be on the table.”

Liu said, “It may not be possible for the state alone to make up the entire altitude of that cliff. But maybe we can make it a more gradual downhill, instead of a sudden drop.”

Class size law remains a sticking point

The state law to reduce class sizes at schools across the five boroughs, which will phase in smaller class sizes each year up to 2027, garnered praise from teachers and education advocates. But Adams and other local officials have expressed concern over the city’s ability to meet the requirements.

At a recent town hall in Brooklyn, First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg said the city would comply with the law, but warned that it would “require very painful tradeoffs.”

When asked whether lawmakers will consider amendments to the law if petitioned by city officials during the next legislative session, Liu said, “We will continue to watch this closely.

“It’s lamentable that they continue to hem and haw about this,” he said, adding it was “absolutely essential” for the city to meet the class size mandate.

Other legislative priorities:

An effort by some lawmakers last spring to reduce the number of school lockdown drills mandated under state law is expected to resurface. Parents have argued the drills harm student mental health without clearly proven safety benefits.
As the state’s Education Department seeks to further update learning standards, Mayer hopes to tackle how to educate students about the history behind modern-day conflicts. She’s alarmed that many students have learned about the Israel-Hamas war largely through social media and is deeply troubled by reports of rising antisemitism and Islamophobia. She believes schools need more support to robustly address these and other instances of discriminatory behavior. “We cannot have students afraid to go to school because they wear a yarmulke or they wear a headscarf,” she said. “I don’t have the answers, but we’re going to have to have answers.”
Other efforts — like a universal free after-school pilot program, potential shifts to literacy instruction, the state’s ongoing transition to zero-emission buses, and more — are also expected to arise in the next session.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

NYC teachers union sues Eric Adams to halt school budget cuts

2023-12-21T19:07:46+00:00

New York City’s teachers union is suing Mayor Eric Adams in an attempt to halt nearly $550 million in school budget cuts, according to legal documents filed Thursday in Manhattan Supreme Court.

Adams is violating a state law barring the city from decreasing its contribution to schools when the city’s overall revenue doesn’t go down, the United Federation of Teachers’ lawsuit argues. Revenues went up by $5 billion last year, the union claims.

The “draconian” cuts, the suit further claims, will infringe on students’ constitutional rights to a “sound basic education.” Three teachers and a speech therapist joined the suit as plaintiffs, outlining how they lack resources and supplies for their students, especially those with high needs.

The suit asks a judge to order the city to restore its funding of schools to last year’s levels.

It is the second legal challenge from a municipal union in the last two weeks seeking to stop the cuts. DC 37, the city’s largest public union, sued over the cuts last week.

“The administration can’t go around touting the tourism recovery and the return of the city’s pre-pandemic jobs, and then create a fiscal crisis and cut education because of its own mismanagement of the asylum seeker problem,” said union president Michael Mulgrew. “Our schools and our families deserve better.”

The city’s law department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Adams sought to downplay the conflict when asked about the lawsuit during an unrelated press conference Thursday morning.

“The UFT, they have to represent their members,” Adams said. “From time to time, friends disagree. Sometimes … it ends up in a courtroom.”

Lawsuit ramps up pressure on Adams

Adams has argued for months that the city is facing a fiscal crisis due to unanticipated spending on the influx of more than 150,000 migrants and asylum-seekers since last summer.

But critics of the cuts, including Mulgrew, have countered that the city is overstating how much the city will spend on the new arrivals. The administration’s claim that the city’s response to the increase in migrants will cost about $11 billion over the next two years is an “unverified estimate,” the lawsuit claims. The Independent Budget Office and the city’s comptroller’s office have projected lower costs.

The city routinely projects budget deficits that are ultimately erased plugged by higher-than-anticipated revenue, Mulgrew argued in a recent op-ed. That’s what happened last fiscal year when the city collected $8.3 billion more than projected in tax revenue, he said.

The move to file a legal challenge represents a significant escalation in the union’s efforts to reverse the cuts, which were originally announced in September and formally rolled out late last month.

Adams ordered all city agencies to find savings of 5% in the November cuts. Additional rounds of 5% cuts are expected in January and next spring, bringing the potential total losses to the Education Department north of $2 billion.

The November cuts, which totaled $547 million, slashed the city’s universal pre-K and 3-K programs, its free summer school program, and its community schools initiative.

Chalkbeat recently learned that the city was quietly targeting cuts in District 75 programs for students with complex disabilities. Staffers said they are facing budget cuts far greater than the $3 million reduction outlined in the November plan. People familiar with the discussions said the planned cuts in District 75 total about $97 million and could jeopardize extracurricular programs, supplies budgets, and the jobs of paraprofessionals.

Those cuts “threaten these schools and the 26,000 students, many of whom have complex disabilities” and “will exacerbate significant staffing and resource shortages,” the suit alleges.

An Education Department spokesperson previously said the agency was doing everything possible to shield schools from the impact of the cuts, and that District 75 schools were undergoing a normal process of reconciling actual enrollment with projections.

Suit hinges on claims of funding misuse

That higher-than-anticipated revenue is at the center of one of the legal claims in the union’s lawsuit.

The suit cites a section of the state education law that “prohibits the City from reducing spending in its schools from the level provided in the preceding year unless overall City revenues decline,” according to legal documents.

The city allocated $14.5 billion to schools in last year’s budget, and $14.1 billion in this year’s, according to the suit. That amount will fall to $13.9 billion if all the cuts go through, the union claims.

Union lawyers also allege that the city is misusing a historic influx in state aid, which has increased by about $1.3 billion in recent years after the state’s fully funded the Foundation Aid formula.

Because of the city’s budget cuts, the Education Department will have to tap state funds to support programs. But state law requires the city to use any increases in state aid to “supplement” what the city is spending on education, rather than “supplant” it, the lawsuit argues — meaning that the Adams administration would be violating this provision.

Three teachers and a speech therapist also joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs, sharing their experiences to illustrate how the cuts could be in violation of a “sound basic education.”

Miriam Sicherman, a third grade teacher at Manhattan’s Children’s Workshop School, has six Spanish-speaking migrant students, four of whom are not literate even in Spanish.

Without any additional resources from the Education Department, the lawsuit claims, she is “essentially running three classes within her third-grade class to accommodate and teach the migrant children with severe educational needs alongside her other third-grade students.”

Rebecca Lopez, a teacher at P.S./M.S. 279 in the Bronx, “cannot afford basic equipment for her high-needs and disabled students or curricular materials for her class,” according to the suit.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s District 75 schools for students with disabilities brace for tens of millions in cuts

2023-12-20T15:25:29+00:00

New York City’s Education Department has quietly been asking leaders of District 75 schools serving students with complex disabilities to slash tens of millions of dollars from their budgets, according to staffers at multiple schools.

The cuts, relayed to principals by schools Chancellor David Banks and District 75 superintendent Ketler Louissant, amount in many cases to more than $1 million per school, and are supposed to take effect immediately, according to staff from multiple affected schools. Across the district, they total about $97 million, and are supposed to help the Education Department achieve savings ordered by Mayor Eric Adams, people familiar with the discussions said.

The cuts would gut extracurricular programming, thin out supply budgets, and exacerbate an already severe paraprofessional shortage, potentially pushing schools even further out of compliance with students’ legally binding special education plans, staffers from four District 75 schools told Chalkbeat.

The roughly 26,000 students in District 75 often have complex disabilities that their local public schools are unable to accommodate, ranging from cerebral palsy to acute emotional challenges.

“They’re asking every principal in District 75 to cut close to $1 million from their budgets,” said a District 75 administrator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “There will be no paper or ink for the printers … children that are emotionally disturbed, autistic, will not be able to get a paraprofessional.”

Education Department officials didn’t confirm the amount of the cuts. But department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer said, “We are in a fiscal crisis, and we are taking every action necessary to limit impact on schools.”

District 75 schools are undergoing a normal process of “reconcil[ing] enrollment with the number of classes needed to serve students,” he said. “Additionally, we are identifying vacancies, efficiencies, and underspending that can be used to meet the mayor’s savings target.”

But staff at District 75 schools said the steep midyear cuts are not typical. District 75 schools don’t get money through the Fair Student Funding formula used for other public schools and aren’t normally subject to “midyear adjustments” that require schools to give back money part way through the year if their enrollments are lower than projected, staffers said.

Moreover, the district’s enrollment has actually gone up in recent years, even as student numbers have cratered in much of the rest of the city. Enrollment in District 75 rose 3% between 2018-2019 and last school year, while K-12 schools lost 13% of their students citywide during the same period.

“We have so many students with referrals waiting for a new seat,” said Tameka Solomon, a teacher and union chapter leader at P352X in the Bronx.

District 75 cuts are larger than anticipated

The cuts far exceed what was outlined in the city’s November budget plan, which listed “savings” of $3 million a year in District 75 because of “lower than expected spending.” When City Councilmember Alexa Avilés, of Brooklyn, asked about a $97 million cut to District 75 during an oversight hearing last week, Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget Director Jacques Jiha pointed only to the $3 million cut outlined in budget documents.

But behind the scenes, the message from Education Department officials has been much different, educators said.

Solomon’s principal was asked to cut $1.3 million from the school’s budget, though subsequently the principal said the cut was on hold, she said.

The Bronx’s P186X, which is the city’s largest District 75 program with nearly 700 students, is also facing a $1.3 million midyear cut, according to teacher and chapter leader Jo Macellaro.

Many District 75 schools have already begun trimming overtime budgets that pay teachers to staff extracurricular programs and budgets for supplies, multiple staffers said. Those cuts are less painful than eliminating staff positions, but they still affect kids, staffers said.

“Even during COVID we always had an afterschool program, and now it’s like, ‘Don’t even think about it,’”said Allister Johnson, an adaptive physical education teacher and union chapter leader at a District 75 school.

“A lot of learning took place,” in the extracurricular programs, he added. “It’s sad for the kids and for the parents.”

Concerns grow over paraprofessional shortage

Reducing overtime and supplies budgets won’t be enough to achieve the required savings, however. Schools will likely have to slash the budgets for paraprofessionals, teaching assistants who provide extra support for students with the greatest needs, staffers said.

District 75 schools have already been experiencing a severe paraprofessional shortage.

The number of paraprofessionals working in city schools fell from roughly 25,700 in June 2020 to about 21,800 in November 2021, according to the state comptroller, a drop of roughly 15%.

As a result, many students with significant disabilities whose special education plans require a dedicated, one-to-one paraprofessional go without one, staffers said.

P186X is already short at least 30 paraprofessionals, according to Macellaro. On some days, one paraprofessional has to change the diapers of a dozen middle school students alone.

“People are getting injured. It’s already really not a good situation. And honestly we’re already rationing things like wipes,” Macellaro added.

Solomon’s school has largely been relying on substitute paraprofessionals. It’s better than nothing, but it often means investing extra time training people who may have never worked with kids, and less continuity for students who have to work with a rotating array of paraprofessionals, she said.

Further cutting the already diminished paraprofessional pool could have disastrous consequences, staffers said.

The District 75 administrator said their school has a number of students with autism who will attempt to run out of their classrooms and the school building with no warning. “Think about what’s going to happen” when those students don’t have a dedicated paraprofessional to follow them throughout the day, the administrator said.

An Education Department spokesperson acknowledged there is a paraprofessional shortage, but attributed it to “lack of talent,” not “lack of funds.”

The budget cuts laid out in November, which amount to 5% from each agency, include roughly $550 million from the Education Department. Additional 5% cuts are expected in January and again in the spring.

Among the Education Department cuts are $10 million from the community schools program, which pairs schools with community organizations to provide additional services to families, and $20 million from the city’s free summer school program.

But the cuts to District 75 appear to be the deepest so far to individual school budgets — a fact that’s baffled the District 75 administrator: “How do you justify asking the most vulnerable children in the city to go without?”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

$9.6 million headed to NYC schools serving homeless students after funding formula change

2023-12-18T23:01:36+00:00

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New York City will send more than $9 million in additional funding to schools serving high shares of homeless students, after updating its policy for how students living in temporary housing are counted, according to the city’s Education Department.

The change comes after Comptroller Brad Lander sent a letter last month warning roughly 21,000 students were at risk of being left out of the city’s school funding formula.

The formula sends additional money to schools that serve a disproportionate share of students with disabilities, English language learners, and students who live in temporary housing. Schools saw their budgets adjusted based on how many students with disabilities and English language learners they served as of December this year. But for students living in temporary housing, the formula previously relied on data from Dec. 31, 2022.

With an influx of asylum-seeking and other migrant families entering the city’s shelter system over the past year, that meant schools serving higher shares of homeless students could miss out on millions in additional funding, Lander said.

But at a town hall in Brooklyn last week, officials from the city’s Education Department said the formula had been tweaked to allocate about $9.6 million in additional school funding.

“Folks should start seeing that,” said schools Chancellor David Banks. “That is happening in real time.”

The city’s Education Department confirmed it had updated school funding allocations for students in temporary housing to use enrollment figures as of Oct. 31.

“Due to the influx of newcomers, we’ve taken a hard look at our policy and revised it so we can more quickly provide resources to our schools to support our newly arriving students,” said Nicole Brownstein, a spokesperson for the city’s Education Department “We are pleased to say the funding was allocated to schools in early December.”

In a statement Monday, Lander praised the decision.

“This will reduce resource scarcity in schools with new arrivals and help ensure all students get the support they need,” he said.

Education Department officials also noted that prior to midyear budget adjustments, $17 million had also been distributed to schools experiencing higher than anticipated enrollment growth.

Officials did not immediately say how many additional students living in temporary housing were included in the school funding formula as a result of the change.

Though the city’s population of homeless students has long remained high, it surged to nearly 120,000 with the influx of asylum-seeking families last year — a record high for the city.

Concerns over the funding formula came as the city experienced broad financial challenges. The Education Department has been forced to cut nearly $550 million from its budget, as the city prepares for the looming expiration of federal pandemic aid next year. Schools where enrollment numbers fell short of projections also faced midyear budget cuts for the first time in four years.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Thousands of NYC school staffers aren’t enrolled in a pension. A new law could change that.

2023-12-13T21:35:58+00:00

A quirk in New York City’s pension system has for years kept tens of thousands of the city’s lowest-paid employees from reaping the benefits of a city-subsidized retirement, according to pension fund and union officials.

New York City’s Board of Education Retirement System, or BERS, which covers school crossing guards, cafeteria workers, aides, parent coordinators, and other non-teaching school staff, stands alone among the city’s five pension funds in not automatically enrolling eligible members in a pension plan.

Many workers don’t know they have the option of signing up for a pension, or simply assume they were automatically enrolled, said Sanford Rich, the executive director of BERS. As a result, roughly 35,000 employees eligible for a pension are not enrolled, according to BERS data.

But new legislation signed over the weekend by Gov. Kathy Hochul is poised to change that system.

The law, sponsored by Queens Assemblywoman Stacy Pfeffer Amato, D-Queens, and Sen. Robert Jackson, D-Manhattan, will make enrollment in the BERS pension system “opt-out,” rather than “opt-in,” for the first time.

“I personally believe this corrects an injustice in the city,” Rich said.

Rich said he’s had to break the news to city workers who retired after decades of service and thought they were on track to receive pension benefits that “‘you never joined, you don’t have a retirement package, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’”

One woman was so distraught that he had to sit with her for hours so she could work up the courage to go home and tell her husband, he said.

But starting July 1 of next year, under the new law, all of the eligible but unenrolled members will be signed up automatically for a pension plan. They’ll have 90 days to opt out. If they hadn’t previously been paying into the pension, they have the option of purchasing previous years of service by paying greater installments.

Officials at DC37 Local 372, the union representing the affected workers, have pushed for years for state legislation to make enrollment in the Board of Education Retirement System automatic and bring it in line with the city’s other pension funds. But previous legislative efforts were met with vetoes from the governor, including one from Hochul in 2022.

A tragedy this year that sparked a new wave of advocacy may have helped turn the tide.

In October, Krystyna Naprawa, a beloved elementary school crossing guard, was struck and killed by a truck while on the job in Queens. The tragedy drew the attention of officials across the city, including Mayor Eric Adams, who called Naprawa “the best of us,” and delivered a eulogy at her funeral.

After Naprawa’s death, her son Tomasz Naprawa, a Port Authority police officer, went to collect the pension he assumed she’d been paying into, only to discover she wasn’t enrolled.

Tomasz Naprawa said it’s extremely unlikely his mom would have knowingly opted out of a pension, especially since she was planning to retire in her native Poland.

“I was like, ‘Wow, that’s crazy,’” he recalled of the discovery that she wasn’t enrolled. “I honestly thought it was automatic.”

Tomasz Naprawa worked with officials at DC37 to bring renewed attention to the pension loophole and legislation to close it.

At Krystyna Naprawa’s funeral, Adams publicly committed to “sit down with the leaders of the Senate and Assembly to see how we can resolve” the pension issue.

But the battle didn’t end there. According to union officials, Adams administration officials initially objected to the bill on financial grounds. City officials say they’re facing a grim fiscal situation and have enacted cuts across all agencies – cuts DC37 recently filed a lawsuit to try to halt. An Adams spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The city will likely have to chip in between $17 million and $22 million extra a year in employer contributions for the new enrollees, according to an analysis by the chief actuary of the city’s pension funds.

When the legislation stalled in the governor’s office, Tomasz Naprawa and union officials renewed their push. Naprawa penned a Nov. 15 letter to Adams urging him to follow through on his commitment and support the bill.

The years of advocacy finally paid off last weekend. Adams administration officials rescinded their objection, and Hochul signed the bill on Dec. 8, union officials said.

“This was long overdue,” said DC37 Local 372 President Shaun Francois in a statement. “Persistence” overcame the “resistance,” he added.

The change is too late to benefit Tomasz Naprawa, but he thinks his mom would’ve been happy to know the advocacy she helped inspire will improve the lives of her colleagues.

“Me and my sister are getting none of these benefits … but going forward it’s nice to know if there’s another tragedy five,10,15 years from now that family will reap all the benefits they’re entitled to,” he said. “I think she’s looking down on us and she’s happy.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

David Banks has a top priority: improving literacy. Will his agenda be overshadowed by budget cuts?

2023-12-08T10:00:00+00:00

Before running the nation’s largest education system, David Banks had never been responsible for supervising more than a single school.

He had years of on-the-ground experience and often ticks off the jobs he held — safety agent, teacher, principal. He helped launch the Eagle Academy, a network of six district schools devoted to boys of color, ultimately running the foundation that supports them. When Eric Adams, a longtime friend, tapped Banks to be his schools chief, the incoming mayor said he didn’t seriously consider anyone else.

Adams, who often spoke on the campaign trail about his own experience with dyslexia, never staked out a detailed education agenda. At the event formally naming him chancellor, Banks spoke in broad strokes about a “fundamentally flawed” system and a sprawling bureaucracy that isn’t set up to serve vulnerable children. The question remained: What direction would this chancellor take the city’s roughly 1,600 schools?

In contrast with his early comments about transforming a broken system, Banks has narrowed his focus. He’s staked out a goal above all others: improving the city’s dismal literacy rates, particularly for Black and Latino children. He also wants to create a stronger path to the workforce by expanding students’ access to career-focused coursework and paid internships.

To Banks’ supporters, focusing on a couple key issues is more likely to yield results. Still, others say that the administration has struggled to define a clear vision for improving the system as a whole, as many schools aren’t part of his signature initiatives.

Meanwhile, a looming set of budget cuts threaten to overshadow Banks’ agenda, as more than $7 billion in one-time federal relief money is drying up and Adams has ordered up to $2 billion in cuts on top of that.

Banks may have to maneuver to maintain funding for his top priorities. And he’ll have to navigate steady drum beats from politicians and advocates who are pushing to save a range of programs that serve high-need children.

“They are going to need to make tough decisions,” said Mark Dunetz, president of New Visions for Public Schools, an organization that supports a network of city schools. The challenge, he added, will be to make those choices “based on evidence of effectiveness rather than the push and pull of politics.”

A ‘realist’ at the helm?

Two weeks into the school year, Banks took the stage at Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn, the mammoth auditorium packed with hundreds of department staff, union leaders, parents, and elected officials. With a slideshow at his back, and the mayor looking on, Banks was selling his vision — and in his element.

The “State of Our Schools” speech laid out his case for requiring all elementary schools to use one of three approved reading curriculums by next fall, ticking off statistics that show half the city’s students aren’t proficient in reading, figures that rise to about 60% for Black and Latino children.

“I’m really staking my reputation on reading,” Banks told Chalkbeat in a recent interview. “If you don’t get that right all these other things don’t really matter.”

Banks touted his other signature initiative, FutureReadyNYC, which helps 100 high schools offer more early college credit and paid work opportunities in education, technology, business, or health care. The effort will expand to 50 more schools next year, he said.

To Banks, zeroing in on those two issues is essential to make his mark. Given the system’s size and complexity, “if you don’t focus the entire operation on a couple of areas, it will be just rhetoric,” he told Chalkbeat.

Some observers agree the moment demands a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer, especially as schools are still digging out from under the pandemic and grappling with learning loss, mental health challenges, and alarming rates of chronic absenteeism.

When Banks took office, some educators wondered if he would pursue changes in the mold of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s divisive schools chief, Joel Klein. Klein sought to overhaul the district’s structure and moved to shutter large high schools and replace them with smaller ones like Eagle Academy. Banks tapped Dan Weisberg, Bloomberg’s school labor strategist who often sparred with the teachers union, to be his top deputy.

But observers said Banks has charted a less disruptive path, bringing the teachers union on board with his two biggest initiatives.

“Joel Klein said ‘I’m going to break the system so hard nobody is going to put it back together,’” said David Adams, the CEO of Urban Assembly, a network of about two dozen schools across the city. “I think being really strategic around where your energies are going to be put forth can be a more effective way of changing the system.”

Still, others said it’s difficult to discern Banks’ broader plan to improve schools across the system, a tension with Banks’ initial diagnosis that the system is “broken.”

This administration’s approach is “pretty small bore,” said Clara Hemphill, founder of the school review website InsideSchools. At this point in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s tenure, he had already added tens of thousands of pre-K seats, part of what is widely seen as a successful universal prekindergarten program.

“Having 70,000 pre-K seats was a huge, huge accomplishment. I don’t see a big issue like that with Adams,” Hemphill said. The current administration also seemed to be reversing course in some areas, she added, including abandoning de Blasio’s goal of expanding the program to include all 3-year-olds.

Hemphill acknowledged that improving literacy rates would be a major accomplishment, but she worries the most popular curriculum the city has mandated is not the strongest choice. Plus, the city disbanded an existing literacy coaching program in favor of training from outside vendors and scrapped a program that focused on improving literacy in middle schools, a move Hemphill found baffling.

For their part, school leaders have had mixed reactions to Banks’ tenure so far. Some expected the schools chief, a New York City principal himself for 11 years, to give them more freedom to innovate — something Banks signaled was a possibility.

De Blasio favored top-down supervision of principals, and many school leaders complained of burdensome compliance mandates. Banks has taken a step further, giving superintendents the authority to mandate which curriculums schools can use based on a list of approved options.

“The system is still running the way it was under the last administration which is: Schools are problems to be fixed rather than systems to be supported,” said one Brooklyn high school principal who spoke on condition of anonymity. “There’s just a whole lot more people out there trying to micromanage schools from afar.”

Banks said he believed strongly in principal autonomy when he was a school leader. “I also am a realist,” he said, adding that not every principal thrives with more freedom.

“If they were, we would have much better results than we have,” he recently told reporters.

Banks strikes a middle ground

Beyond his two main initiatives, critics and supporters alike say Banks has earned a reputation for hearing out opposing viewpoints and finding ways to compromise.

“If the evidence is there, he moves. He’s not ideological,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, a strong supporter of Banks’ reading curriculum overhaul.

When Banks took office, he faced a key decision about whether many middle and high schools could resume screening students for top grades and test scores after pandemic-related disruptions to the admissions process.

The debate over how to proceed was charged, with some parents arguing that strong students should have access to accelerated learning opportunities at top schools. Others worried a return to the pre-pandemic norm would exacerbate segregation and contended that public schools should be open to all children.

Though Banks has bluntly suggested some students deserve to be in top schools more than others, he struck a middle path: Selective admissions would continue with key caveats. High schools may no longer consider state test scores, though they can still use students’ grades. For middle schools, he gave local superintendents the authority to determine how to use selective admissions. The result: far fewer screened middle school programs.

Jasmine Gripper, a frequent critic of the administration, said the approach is emblematic of Banks’ leadership style.

“The finesse of this administration has been their ability to take on hot button issues and produce a solution that neutralizes the opposition,” said Gripper, previously the executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education and now a leader of the state’s Working Families Party. Banks “leaves everyone walking away feeling like they won something.”

Financial challenges could derail Banks’ plans

The biggest obstacle on Banks’ plate right now may be one that’s much harder to control.

A brewing storm of fiscal problems could derail some of Banks’ existing initiatives, threaten to consume his agenda with painful fights over budget reductions, and make it difficult to find money for new programs.

More than $7 billion in one-time federal money is running dry. Starting with the previous administration, some of it has been used on recurring costs, including social workers, expanded summer programming, and new seats for preschool students with disabilities who had been shut out of universal pre-K. The funding has also been used to keep school budgets steady despite significant enrollment declines, raising the possibility of painful cuts at individual schools.

As the federal funds evaporate, Adams has also ordered the city to cut 5% of its contribution to all city agencies, a move he said is needed in part to finance services for thousands of asylum-seeking families. The Education Department recently outlined plans to reduce spending by $547 million, and it may need to slash roughly $1.5 billion more if Adams follows through on future rounds of cuts.

Advocates have warned that it will be impossible to make cuts of that size without affecting key programs, and the first round of cuts has already prompted political pushback.

A new state law mandating the city reduce class sizes looms over these fiscal pressures: The Education Department will need to spend billions more in the coming years to comply, city and fiscal watchdogs project.

On top of that, Banks may have another fight on the horizon. As enrollment declines accelerated during the pandemic, the city now has nearly 200 schools with 200 children or fewer.

Banks has suggested that mergers or closures could be on the table, a process that often generates outcry from parents and elected officials with deep roots in school communities.

“That’s kind of a ticking time bomb,” said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College. “It’s just not going to be sustainable to maintain very small schools.”

Banks has offered few hints about how he plans to navigate the growing budget pressures, including what criteria he’s using to determine which programs survive. He said he’s “fighting like heck” to preserve funding for the literacy overhaul and career pathways initiative. Everything else is on the table.

“It’s gonna be a tough negotiating season,” Banks said.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NYC withholding $11 million from schools serving homeless students, comptroller says

2023-11-21T23:19:11+00:00

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Just months after New York City changed its school funding formula to funnel more aid to homeless students, Comptroller Brad Lander warned roughly 21,000 students are at risk of being left out.

The city’s school funding formula also sends additional money to schools that serve a disproportionate share of students with disabilities and English language learners. But while schools will see their budgets adjusted based on how many students from those groups they are serving as of this December, data on the city’s homeless students will not be updated the same way.

In a letter last week, the city’s chief financial officer urged schools Chancellor David Banks to reverse a decision that would calculate funding allocations based on homeless student populations as of Dec. 31, 2022.

With a persistent influx of asylum-seeking families entering the city’s shelter system over the past year, using those figures would mean schools serving higher shares of homeless students could miss out on nearly $11 million in additional funding, Lander said.

Since last December, roughly 21,000 students in temporary housing have enrolled in New York City schools, with many enrolling in schools near shelters that will need additional resources, Lander said. He added the city already uses midyear enrollment data to adjust funding based on other student populations.

“So what is the educational policy reason for DOE uniquely denying funding to schools with new students in temporary housing?” Lander said. “Without other explanation, it appears that you are purposely creating resource scarcity in schools with new arrivals.”

The city’s Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A guide explaining the school funding formula notes that although funds for students in temporary housing aren’t part of the midyear adjustment of school budgets, the city’s Education Department “remains committed to supporting schools experiencing financial hardship due to the increase in new [students in temporary housing] admits.”

Concerns over school funding come amid the city’s broader financial woes, as the Education Department is set to cut nearly $550 million from its budget, and the expiration of federal pandemic aid looms over the next year. More than 650 schools also saw midyear budget cuts after enrollment numbers fell short of projections, though a majority of schools received extra funds after citywide enrollment ticked up for the first time in eight years.

The additional funds for students in temporary housing followed a task force recommendation to revise the city’s Fair Student Funding formula, which accounts for about two-thirds of school budgets. Under the formula, schools typically receive a baseline amount per student, with extra dollars added on top for students with additional needs.

Though the city’s population of homeless students has remained high for more than a decade, it surged to nearly 120,000 with an influx of asylum-seeking families last year. That was a 14% increase from the year before and a record high for the city, according to Advocates for Children, a group that supports the city’s most vulnerable students.

Roughly 1 in 9 students were living in shelters, “doubled up” with relatives or friends, or otherwise without permanent housing at some point in the school year, the data showed.

Using more recent enrollment numbers would help account for asylum-seeking students who arrive in the city and then transfer between schools, Lander said in the letter.

Advocates fear that school transfers could become even more common under a city rule implemented by Mayor Eric Adams last month. The rule requires families in some shelters to exit the system every 60 days, meaning they will need to find alternative housing or re-apply for shelter.

Adams later insisted the rule would not force children to change schools.

Students living in shelters were more than four times as likely as kids with permanent housing to transfer schools, according to data from the 2021-22 school year.

Michael Elsen-Rooney contributed.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Eric Adams axes $547 million from NYC Education Department budget, more cuts on the way

2023-11-16T22:35:09+00:00

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New York City’s Education Department will cut nearly $550 million from its budget this year as part of a sweeping round of citywide reductions ordered by Mayor Eric Adams.

Many of the cuts are expected to take effect immediately. They will touch a wide range of programs and positions that directly affect students, from the city’s massive free preschool program, to community schools that support families with out-of-school needs, to the popular pandemic-era Summer Rising program.

A big chunk of this year’s savings will come through a hiring slowdown and the elimination of 432 vacant non-classroom positions, which officials said on Thursday will lead to a combined $157 million in savings.

Budget officials didn’t specify which roles would be eliminated but emphasized cuts to central offices and other roles that support schools. A hiring freeze has been in place since earlier this fall, but has not applied to teaching positions. Education Department officials didn’t immediately say whether the agency would continue to spare teaching positions from the freeze.

A mandate to rein in spending on “supplemental pay for administrative staff” is expected to save another $86 million this year, but officials didn’t immediately provide details on what that means.

In September, Adams directed all city agencies to find cuts equal to at least 5% of the city’s contribution to their annual budgets by November, in response to what he described as unsustainable levels of spending on the ongoing influx of asylum seekers. Additional cuts of 5% are expected in January and again in spring 2024.

In all, that means the Education Department could face up to $2.1 billion in cuts. The department’s overall budget is roughly $37.5 billion this school year.

Starting next fiscal year, the department will cut $120 million from the Universal Pre-K program, which enrolled about 100,000 3- and 4-year-old this year and is the signature legacy of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration. The program has been beset by payment delays to child care operators and enrollment declines during the pandemic.

Officials said they’re reducing the size of the program because there are about 37,000 vacant seats, but did not specify how many of those slots they plan to eliminate.

“While we don’t know many details yet, there is no way a cut this large would not hurt the services available to children and families,” said Gregory Brender, the chief of policy and innovation at the Day Care Council of New York, a membership organization of child care providers.

A range of longstanding programs with a direct presence in schools are also facing small cuts.

An initiative to expand the teaching of computer science is losing $3.5 million this year, while the budget for community schools will be cut by $10 million this year. Community schools were another major educational priority of de Blasio’s administration, and have continued to grow under Adams.

Separately, nearly $20 million in funding for Summer Rising, the pandemic-era free summer school program that served roughly 110,000 students last year, is being slashed from the budget of the city’s Youth and Community Development Department, which jointly operates the program with the Education Department. The cuts will mean reduced hours and no Friday programs for some middle-schoolers, officials said.

The program has proved immensely popular with families and had about 45,000 more applicants than slots last year.

“For months, we have warned New Yorkers about the challenging fiscal situation our city faces,” Adams said in a Thursday statement. “To balance the budget as the law requires, every city agency dug into their own budget to find savings, with minimal disruption to services. And while we pulled it off this time, make no mistake: Migrant costs are going up, tax revenue growth is slowing, and COVID stimulus funding is drying up.”

Budget analysts have pointed out that the cuts ordered by Adams are far greater than the expected costs of serving the asylum seekers. The city also collected nearly $8 billion more in revenue last fiscal year than anticipated, according to a recent analysis from Comptroller Brad Lander.

Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, called the cuts “unnecessary” and “driven by City Hall’s false political narrative that New York City is about to fall off a fiscal cliff.”

“Revenues are higher than expected, investment from Albany is up, and reserves are at a near-record high,” he added.

Other groups warned that the city’s hiring and budget freeze is already affecting services for vulnerable children, and that further cuts could threaten their legal rights.

Advocates for Children, a nonprofit group, said the city has been unable to hire 15 additional staffers to help families living in shelters navigate the education system, an urgent concern given the influx of migrant families.

The organization also said short staffing appeared to be causing delays in providing preschool special education evaluations and services in the Bronx.

“We are particularly concerned that these budget plans will result in even more egregious violations of the rights of students with disabilities, English Language Learners, and students in temporary housing or foster care,” Advocates for Children executive director Kim Sweet said in a statement.

More cuts ahead for NYC schools

The city-directed budget cuts are part of a perfect storm of fiscal trouble facing city schools.

About $7.7 billion in one-time pandemic aid from the federal government has padded the Education Department’s budget in recent years and funded critical initiatives, including expanded preschool and summer enrichment programs. That money will dry up next September, and the looming expiration of that aid has already prompted some painful cuts.

For the first time in four years, the Education Department clawed back money this week from schools where enrollment numbers fell short of projections.

Because enrollment went up overall across the city, the majority of schools didn’t have to return money, and instead got extra funding because of higher-than projected enrollment. But there were still more than 650 schools that saw a total of $109 million in midyear cuts, according to a United Federation of Teachers analysis.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

With influx of migrants, NYC school enrollment ticks up for first time in 8 years

2023-11-15T20:36:46+00:00

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The number of students attending New York City’s public schools increased for the first time in eight years, a sign that enrollment may be stabilizing in the wake of deep declines during the pandemic.

About 915,000 children from 3-K to 12th grade enrolled this year, up 0.9% from last year, or roughly 8,000 additional students, according to preliminary Education Department data released Wednesday.

Still, city schools enrolled about 92,000 fewer children compared with the year before the pandemic hit, a decline of roughly 9%.

An influx of asylum-seeking families appeared to be a major factor in reversing the yearslong trend of declining enrollment. About 13,000 migrant students have enrolled in the city’s schools since June, city officials said.

Mayor Eric Adams has previously taken a harsh posture on the wave of arriving asylum seekers, saying, “This issue will destroy New York City.” He traveled to the border last month to persuade migrants not to come. Meanwhile, to finance services for migrant families, the mayor has ordered funding reductions elsewhere — including up to $2.1 billion from the Education Department’s budget.

In a joint press release with schools Chancellor David Banks, Adams celebrated the rise in enrollment and some of the city’s efforts to welcome new arrivals in the city’s public schools.

“Chancellor Banks and our administration are focused on delivering the best education possible for our young New Yorkers by cutting through bureaucracy, expanding outreach, and making enrollment easier,” Adams said in a statement. “New Yorkers are voting with their feet, and we are excited to see funding increase for so many of our public schools.”

City officials cautioned that the enrollment figures are preliminary and will likely fluctuate as students continue to enter or leave the system midyear. (The numbers do not include charter schools.)

Enrollment is a key issue because the lion’s share of school budgets are determined based on how many students are on their registers. Over the past few years, the Education Department avoided some enrollment-related cuts to individual schools by using hundreds of millions worth of one-time federal relief funding as campuses recover from the pandemic.

That money is dwindling, though, which means schools face growing budget pressures.

For the first time since the pandemic hit, the Education Department is forcing schools to return money in the middle of the year if they end up enrolling fewer students than the city projected.

Because of higher than expected enrollment, about 57% of schools will see midyear funding bumps, averaging about $209,000 per school, officials said. The remaining 43% of schools will see midyear cuts averaging $167,000.

Declining enrollment can pose other significant problems for schools. As the number of students on a given campus dwindles, it typically becomes increasingly difficult to fund a full range of programs and extracurricular activities. The number of schools with tiny enrollments has grown in recent years, prompting questions about whether city officials may propose a wave of mergers or closures.

In a recent interview with Chalkbeat, Banks said district leaders are planning to have “community conversations” this year about potential mergers.

“Some level of consolidation is something that I think we would be irresponsible if we were not looking at that,” Banks said, “particularly in light of the fiscal challenges that we’re having.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Advocates demanded $1.25 billion to make NYC schools more accessible. They got $800 million.

2023-11-01T22:14:41+00:00

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New York City plans to spend $800 million over the next five years to boost school building accessibility for people with physical disabilities, officials revealed Wednesday. That figure is far short of what advocates had demanded.

Fewer than 1 in 3 of the city’s public schools are fully accessible to students and staff with mobility impairments, according to a recent report from the group Advocates for Children. The organization previously called on the city to dramatically ramp up spending to $1.25 billion to ensure that at least half of buildings would become fully accessible over the term of the new capital plan, which runs from 2025 through 2029.

With many budget concerns on the horizon — including the expiration of billions of dollars in federal relief money and additional cuts to city agencies ordered by Mayor Eric Adams — accessibility funding hewed closely to current levels.

The capital plan will increase funding for accessibility from $750 million under the current five-year plan, which runs from 2020 through 2024, to $800 million in the new one, according to documents released Wednesday. Advocates contend that is not enough to keep the current pace because of inflation and rising construction costs.

“Given the decades of inadequate attention that preceded this investment, nearly two-thirds of City schools will still not be fully accessible by the time the construction funded by the current Capital Plan is complete,” Kim Sweet, executive director of Advocates for Children, said in a statement. “It is not acceptable to postpone compliance with [the federal Americans with Disabilities Act] for yet another generation.”

Lack of access to school buildings has long been a barrier for students with physical disabilities and has even drawn the attention of federal prosecutors. In past years, some children had few — or even zero — nearby school options. It can also limit students’ ability to take advantage of New York City’s extensive choice system, which allows children to apply for schools outside their neighborhood boundaries.

Queens mom Michelle Noris said she was disappointed when her son, who uses a wheelchair, could not attend the public elementary school across the street from their home. Instead, he wound up at a private school, with tuition covered by the city, about an hour away.

“I really wish he had friends down the block like all the other kids,” said Noris, who works as an engineer. Though her son is now in college — and has written about his experience navigating the city’s high school admissions process in a wheelchair — she remains an advocate for more accessible schools.

Although “there is an improvement” in terms of building upgrades, she said the school across the street from their home is still not fully accessible. At the current pace, it would take decades to make every school accessible. “They need to allocate more money to do more good work,” Noris said.

Officials have made some progress in recent years in part due to pressure from advocacy groups who have pushed for more funding — and attention — to the issue. By the end of the current capital plan, 1 in 3 schools are expected to be fully accessible, up from 1 in 5 five years ago. (The figures do not include certain alternative schools, prekindergarten programs, or charter schools. Nor do they include satellite campuses, as schools may have more than one location.)

The city has also boosted the number of schools that are considered “partially accessible” and worked to provide more granular information about which facilities on those campuses are accessible to students with mobility impairments.

Representatives of the city’s Education Department and School Construction Authority did not say what percentage of schools they plan to make fully accessible under the new capital plan.

“Building on prior plans, we will continue to enhance accessibility in our school buildings through a variety of measures, such as bathroom renovations, lifts, and ramps,” Kevin Ortiz, a spokesperson for the School Construction Authority, wrote in a statement. “We remain committed to improving access throughout the system.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NYC schools with enrollment shortfalls face cuts; more budget losses loom

2023-10-25T23:00:06+00:00

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New York City schools with lower than projected enrollments will see their budgets slashed midyear for the first time in four years.

School and Education Department staffers said the move comes as little surprise given the city’s bleak fiscal situation and dwindling federal COVID relief funds. City officials had used federal funding the past three school years to avert the midyear cuts and hold schools “harmless” if their student rosters fell short of the Education Department’s estimates.

“As NYCPS navigates the current fiscal landscape, we’ve made the necessary decision to revert to our pre-COVID-19 budgeting process,” said Education Department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer.

Schools get money in the summer based on the city’s projections of how many students are expected to fill their seats. After the final tallies are taken on Oct. 31, the Education Department adjusts school budgets, clawing back money from schools that enroll fewer students than anticipated. Schools with higher than projected enrollment will still get additional money, similar to past years, though administrators have said it can be difficult to spend the sudden influx of cash effectively in the middle of the school year.

Calee Prindle, an assistant principal at the Facing History School in Manhattan, said her school stands to lose about $160,000 if no more students enroll before Oct. 31.

“Losing that money, it sucks, but for us it’s not going to be wildly detrimental,” she said. “For me, it’s always about the communication, and I’m glad we know now.”

Still, the return to midyear cuts deals a significant blow to schools that may already be reeling from years of shrinking budgets due to enrollment losses and heightened needs in the wake of the pandemic.

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew argued that the increase in state funding in recent years should be enough to continue the policy of propping budgets up even if schools miss their enrollment projections.

“It is unacceptable for NYC to cut funding to its public schools especially when the state has made such a strong financial commitment to our students,” he said in a statement.

Education Department faces major budget strain

Even with an increase in state aid, it’s a particularly precarious financial moment for the Education Department and the city as a whole.

More than $7 billion in federal relief funds that the Education Department has received since the beginning of the pandemic expires next September. The city has used that money to fund summer programming and social workers, along with propping up school budgets amid enrollment losses.

On top of that, Mayor Eric Adams earlier this fall ordered all city agencies to cut 5% of their budgets in November, an additional 5% in January, and another 5% in April in response to rising costs as the city faces an influx of asylum-seekers.

The three rounds of cuts would slash a total of $2.1 billion from the Education Department’s budget, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute. It’s an enormous sum that schools Chancellor David Banks has said will likely “affect every aspect of what we do.”

The Education Department has not made final decisions about what to cut in the first round, and the decision to reinstate the midyear adjustment was not related to the budget cut mandate, Styer said.

Officials didn’t say how much the Education Department will save in the cost-cutting move. Last year, the Education Department spent $200 million to avert the midyear cut.

Fiscal belt-tightening plays out in other ways

As part of the Adams administration’s budget cut mandate, the city’s Office of Management and Budget imposed a hiring freeze, according to Education Department staffers and budget documents.

The hiring freeze doesn’t apply to school-based staff, but affects many other positions, including central personnel tasked with supporting schools and specific student populations, such as those who live in temporary housing and children with disabilities, according to staffers and advocates.

“Hiring for each position is going under a lot more scrutiny, and we realize that some may end up getting delayed for some period of time — and we don’t know for how long,” said one central staffer familiar with the budget, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

A plan to hire more than a dozen temporary staffers to support kids in shelters with educational needs was delayed because of the freeze, and vacant positions on the teams that ensure students with disabilities get necessary services have gone unfilled, according to Advocates for Children, a group that supports vulnerable students.

“We have seen significant delays in students in shelter receiving the school placements and transportation they need,” said Randi Levine, the policy director at Advocates for Children. She noted that some of the Education Department’s federal relief money is earmarked to support students in temporary housing and can’t be spent on other things.

“We don’t want the DOE to squander the resources it has available given the huge need we’re seeing on the ground,” she added.

The worst is likely yet to come. Another central staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity said teams in central offices have been asked to start preparing for significant cuts – far deeper than in past years.

And while the cuts to the Education Department’s central offices are likely to be the steepest, that division only accounts for between 1-2 % of the Education Department’s overall budget, meaning cuts outside of central offices will almost certainly be necessary.

Two areas likely to get spared: Banks’s signature NYC Reads initiative, which seeks to revamp elementary school literacy instruction by forcing districts to adopt one of three pre-selected reading curricula, and his FutureReadyNYC program, which funds schools to expand career-connected learning, according to the chancellor.

“The reading work that we’re doing and the pathways work that we’re doing is going to be prioritized,” Banks recently told reporters. “That’s where we’re going to be making sure that the investments are still there.”

Alex Zimmerman contributed.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

NYC vowed more school contracts for businesses owned by women, people of color. It hasn’t been easy.

2023-10-12T23:35:35+00:00

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Last spring, New York City’s Education Department unveiled its most aggressive step yet to increase spending on businesses owned by women or people of color.

The new directive required all vendors with new contracts to subcontract out a portion of their business to Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprises — a significant commitment for an agency that spends roughly $10 billion a year on contracts.

But the implementation of that promise has proved far more complicated. Late last week, the Education Department began quietly rolling back the requirements for some pending contracts, Chalkbeat has learned.

And the implementation challenges in the new push to increase spending on such businesses — a major priority of Mayor Eric Adams — are even causing problems for companies involved with another top Adams priority — his NYC Reads literacy initiative.

Education Department officials confirmed that certain contracts are now being given the green light to move forward without meeting the new requirements — at least for now. But a spokesperson said the agency still intends to enforce the rules for future contracts.

The subcontracting requirement was introduced in late March, one of a series of changes approved last November as a way to address the department’s abysmal record of doing business with Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprises, or MWBEs.

Effective immediately, officials said in a press release, the department would require vendors to subcontract out at least 30% of the value of any new contracts to businesses owned by minorities or women.

Schools Chancellor David Banks heralded the move. “We are providing these businesses and their owners with the opportunity to build generational wealth and create a more fair and equal city,” he said in a statement at the time.

Figuring out how to put that mandate into practice threw the contracting system into disarray, interviews and documents show. It touched off months of uncertainty and disruption for vendors and Education Department staff, as top agency officials deliberated behind the scenes over whether and how to insert the new language in recently approved contracts, according to communications reviewed by Chalkbeat.

The process for finalizing new textbook, curriculum, and professional development contracts — including a deal with Great Minds, the company that publishes Wit & Wisdom, one of the three mandated curriculums for Adams’s signature literacy initiative — was essentially at a standstill, according to multiple vendors and Education Department staffers.

Also held up in the logjam were two multiyear professional development contracts for math and literacy instructional support with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the publisher of the most widely used curriculum in the NYC Reads initiative.

“Until leadership can make a decision on this we do not expect any contracts to be circulated for signatures,” according to a notice earlier this month from an Education Department official to a vendor obtained by Chalkbeat.

Then, in recent days, the department appeared to backpedal, sending some vendors notice of “shifts in our implementation strategy” and alerting them that they would no longer be required to adhere to the subcontracting goals.

Education Department officials said certain contracts approved by the Panel for Educational Policy after June were given a pass on the new rules during this “transition” period, but did not say how many got a reprieve.

Spokesperson Jenna Lyle added that “all future solicitations and contracts will include these [subcontracting] goals moving forward.”

But the rocky implementation with the recent round of contracts has left some vendors wondering whether the agency has laid the necessary groundwork to implement such a sweeping change and how it will manage the process going forward.

“To me, it seems like they just didn’t do their research to begin with,” said one vendor who said their contract was frozen for months as a result of the standstill. The vendor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize relationships with the Education Department, said they recently received a notice that they would no longer have to adhere to the new subcontracting requirements.

Adams zeroes in on MWBE contracting

The Education Department subcontracting goals are one piece of a larger effort to increase city spending on MWBEs, both in the department and across all city agencies.

Adams appointed a citywide Chief Business Diversity Officer, and Banks named Karine Appollon, a former executive at the nonprofit Reading Partners and educational publishing giant Scholastic, to the newly created role of chief diversity officer to oversee the department’s MWBE efforts.

In November, the Panel for Educational Policy approved a suite of changes to the agency’s procurement rules to ease the process for MWBEs to win large contracts with the Education Department. A parallel change that would incentivize individual schools to hire MWBEs for smaller deals is up for a vote before the panel next week.

The efforts are showing some signs of progress: The Education Department increased its spending on MWBEs from $224 million in fiscal year 2021, to $535 million dollars in fiscal year 2022, Banks said recently. That amounts to 5.6% of contract spending on MWBEs, still last among all city agencies, according to a February report from Comptroller Brad Lander.

That figure is a long way off from the city’s overall goal of directing 30% of all vendor spending to MWBEs. That’s where the subcontracting directive came in.

The directive would guarantee that, even if the primary vendor on the contract wasn’t an MWBE itself, 30% of the value of the contract would end up in the hands of MWBEs through subcontracting.

Companies can subcontract out for all sorts of services, including distribution of print products, technology and software infrastructure, and customer service.

But the directive presented significant challenges for both small and large vendors, according to one person familiar with the Education Department’s contracts processes, who spoke anonymously so as not to jeopardize relationships.

Some smaller companies spend the majority of their contracts on their own staff, while many large companies operate mostly in other parts of the country or world, making it difficult to switch over to MWBEs certified by New York City, who are more likely to be located in and around New York.

“You look at some of the bigger publishers out there, they don’t have distribution or transportation housed in New York City, they wouldn’t be profitable,” the person said. “Most of these companies are now struggling to find an entity to support this.”

Vendors can win an exemption from the subcontracting requirements if there are not enough certified MWBE companies to perform the necessary services, or if they have “legitimate business reasons” for not complying, according to a contract obtained by Chalkbeat. But it wasn’t immediately clear how the Education Department would decide on those exemptions.

New contracts grind to a halt

While officials were debating internally about if and how to implement the thorny requirements, the process for finalizing new contracts effectively ground to a halt.

Typically, contracts are approved by the city’s Panel for Educational Policy and then handed over to the DOE’s legal team, where they are finalized and delivered to the city comptroller for registration. But for several months, contracts for textbooks, professional development and other services that cleared the Panel for Educational Policy made it no further, according to communications reviewed by Chalkbeat.

When vendors don’t have finalized contracts, they have no guarantee of payment. Some larger companies may opt to continue offering their product without payment, but for smaller operators, that can be too much of a financial risk.

For one professional development vendor whose contract was held up, the delay has meant less money flowing in and fewer schools getting instructional support they’ve relied on for years.

“Some of these schools have had these services for many years, and it’s grinding to a halt now,” said a representative from the vendor, who spoke anonymously so as not to jeopardize relationships with the Education Department. “Principals are getting very frustrated…[and] it’s a little bit of a worry for our employees.”

Another contract caught up in the standstill was the one for Great Minds, the company that produces Wit & Wisdom.

As a result, the company’s print materials were temporarily unavailable through ShopDOE, the website where schools buy materials from companies that have contracts with the Education Department, a company spokesperson said. If materials aren’t listed on ShopDOE, schools have to go through a more complicated and labor-intensive process to obtain them.

Wit & Wisdom print materials were added back to ShopDOE in early October, but the contract still isn’t finalized, according to CheckbookNYC.

“Once again the Wit & Wisdom curriculum can be ordered through ShopDOE after a brief delay that occurred when the Great Minds textbook contract was being renewed,” said Great Minds spokesperson Nancy Zuckerbrod.

Among the other contracts approved by the Panel for Educational Policy over the summer but not yet finalized or delivered to the city comptroller is a three-year, $10.6 million textbook deal with McGraw Hill, which publishes widely used textbooks.

Two contracts with publishing giant Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to provide literacy and math coaching and professional development that cleared the PEP over the summer also are not yet finalized, according to Checkbook NYC.

Lyle, the Education Department spokesperson, didn’t say exactly how long it would take to get the pending contracts finalized, but said “we are working with vendors currently going through our procurement process on how they can best support this work as we finalize outstanding contracts.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

5 things we’re watching this school year in NYC

2023-09-07T10:00:00+00:00

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More than 900,000 New York City public school students are slated to resume classes on Thursday with the customary mix of excitement, jitters, and joy.

In recent years, one acute crisis after another has overshadowed the start of classes, from chaotic efforts to restart in-person classes during the height of the pandemic to a bruising battle over budget cuts and an influx of asylum seekers that began last summer.

This year is proving to be no exception in the nation’s largest district: Families and educators are bracing for a school bus driver strike that could affect some 80,000 students, including many of the city’s most vulnerable. Union officials promised that the first week of service would not be interrupted, but the threat of a strike still looms.

Climate-related issues also affected this year’s start, just as they impacted the end of last school year. The National Weather Service issued a heat advisory for Thursday, forcing schools to limit outdoor activities between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m, school officials said.

But it’s not just acute challenges facing the city as the school year resumes.

Thorny long-term enrollment and budget issues that have been simmering for years could also come to a head this year with a fiscal cliff looming.

It will also be a pivotal school year for schools Chancellor David Banks, as his signature initiative to overhaul literacy instruction starts rolling out.

Here are five big issues we’ll be watching closely as this critical school year begins:

Asylum seekers continue arriving

The influx of asylum seekers to New York City that began last summer has shown no signs of abating. The Education Department has enrolled an estimated 21,000 newly arrived students since last summer, including 2,500 since this July.

There’s plenty of room in city schools: K-12 enrollment has fallen by more than 120,000 over the past five years.

And educators and families across the city have mobilized over the last year to welcome the newcomers with everything from basic needs to language support.

But lingering challenges continue to undercut the city’s efforts to support the newcomers, starting with gaps in the process for quickly enrolling them in school.

And once they arrive, many won’t attend schools with bilingual teachers. A report last year from the Independent Budget Office found that under half of the schools that enrolled asylum seekers last year had a certified bilingual teacher on staff, reflecting a long-running shortage.

Banks has said new efforts are in the works to step up recruitment of bilingual teachers.

A fiscal cliff looms

New York City schools have been profoundly reshaped by an infusion of $7 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funds meant to help school districts climb out from under the shadow of the pandemic. Among the big ticket items entirely or largely funded by that money are:

Summer Rising, the city’s free summer school program combining recreation and academics for roughly 100,000 kids each of the last three summers. The program has proven so popular that 45,000 families were turned away this year.
500 new social workers spread across the city to help address mounting mental health challenges.
A program to shore up school budgets after enrollment losses. Prior to the pandemic, when schools lost students, their budgets were slashed accordingly. But the city has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid to blunt the impact of those budget cuts.

All of those programs and more will be on the chopping block next school year, since the federal relief money must be spent by October 2024. That will likely spur some fierce and thorny battles over prioritizing existing money, or finding new sources of funding.

Banks’ signature initiative takes off

Banks has largely defined his tenure around a single goal: improving the teaching of literacy.

At the center of that goal is a sweeping initiative to overhaul the curriculum that schools use to teach reading in an effort to standardize practices across schools and abandon approaches that have been increasingly discredited. Fifteen of the city’s 32 community school districts will start this year using one of the three new pre-approved curriculum options, with the rest following next year.

But mandating new curriculums is just the first step. Changing something as deeply ingrained as how schools teach reading will require buy-in from staff and ongoing supervision and training. Officials have promised a robust training plan, but recently scrapped the department’s large in-house literacy coaching program and have so far largely outsourced professional development to curriculum publishers and other outside groups.

It’s not just elementary literacy in Banks’ crosshairs: the Education Department is also mandating a ninth-grade algebra curriculum at some high schools, as well as an early childhood curriculum, and First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg said Wednesday that the agency plans to look “very, very closely” at the curriculums used in all core classes across all grades in the coming years.

Teachers: We want to hear from you about what kind of training you are receiving — and need — to effectively use the new curriculum.

Enrollment and attendance challenges linger

The influx of asylum seekers over the past year helped slow the enrollment bleeding, but the long-term trends are unmistakable: New York City’s public schools are losing students.

The reasons are complex, including a drop in young students entering school during the pandemic, and a surge in families leaving New York City for more affordable destinations.

But the impact for the school system is profound. As of last year, the Education Department had 201 schools with fewer than 200 students. That’s more than twice the number of tiny schools 15 years earlier.

Since school budgets are largely tied to enrollment, ultra-small schools often struggle to offer enough courses and extracurricular variety to function. In the long run, there will likely be increasing pressure on the city to consider closures or mergers.

It’s not just enrollment patterns reducing the number of children in city schools on any given day: Chronic absenteeism has also spiked, jumping from an average of around 25% before the pandemic to 36% last school year (down slightly from 41% the year before), officials said. Chronic absenteeism is closely linked to adverse academic outcomes, and the city’s efforts to improve attendance could be a core part of efforts to recover from pandemic losses.

NYC students, staff face ongoing academic, emotional challenges

The ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and disrupted years of schooling continue to reverberate, touching everything from standardized test scores, to elevated levels of absenteeism, to teachers’ and students’ mental health, to spikes in youth violence.

The city has launched a grab bag of both big ticket and smaller scale programs to address those sweeping challenges, some of which will be at risk when federal stimulus money expires next year.

But others are still getting off the ground, including a telehealth initiative to expand therapy access to teenagers. Banks said Wednesday that the program will roll out by the end of 2023 and will be free and open to all city teenagers ages 13 to 17.

In many ways, all of the city’s big educational initiatives, from the literacy curriculum overhaul to efforts to preempt and prevent youth violence can be seen through the lens of addressing the lingering scars of the pandemic — and recovery remains a core challenge for the school system.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s budget deal restores some education programs

2023-06-30T19:16:58+00:00

This story has been updated to reflect new information.

A tentative New York City budget agreement announced Thursday restores funding to a handful of initiatives that Mayor Eric Adams initially nixed, including one focused on student mental health and another that provides child care subsidies to undocumented families.

The final agreement, which is being voted on Friday, holds the education department’s budget roughly steady at $31.5 billion. That’s a significant shift from the mayor’s April budget proposal, which called for a $30.6 billion budget for the city’s schools, nearly a $1 billion cut.

Officials said the final budget reflects several sources of funding that were not accounted for in the mayor’s April proposal, including $416 million in additional money from the state and $246 million in federal stimulus money that was initially set to be spent in a subsequent year. The budget deal also added $275 million for holding initial school budgets steady even if their enrollment drops and to pay for a slew of other “new needs.”

City officials did not immediately provide a full explanation of what the funding shifts will cover and official budget documents were not yet available.

Still, officials touted a number of programs that were spared from the chopping block. After an unusually chilly “handshake” agreement Thursday, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams expressed frustration that negotiations centered on saving various initiatives.

“The council’s focus this year was to restore cuts to essential services,” she said, calling the mayor’s approach counterproductive and the result bittersweet.

The mayor downplayed the tension, saying negotiations are often contentious and the resulting budget is a “win for working-class New Yorkers.” The city’s overall spending has grown in recent years, with the latest agreement reaching about $107 billion.

Negotiators agreed to maintain funding to a few education-related programs, including one that connects students to mental health support and another that subsidizes child care for undocumented families. City officials credited higher-than-expected revenue, but cautioned that they believe tax growth may slow in the coming years.

The City Council must pass the budget by Saturday, the first day of the new fiscal year.

Here’s what to know:

Still unclear how individual school budgets will be affected

Although the education department’s overall budget is dipping, city officials pledged to keep individual school budgets steady — at least at first. Typically, funding depends on campus enrollment, which has been declining systemwide. But in recent years city officials have plugged school budget holes with federal funding.

Still, some schools’ budgets may shrink or grow, as the city takes back or adds money to campuses in the middle of the school year if their actual enrollment differs from projections. City officials have not made midyear cuts since the onset of the pandemic but have declined to say what they will do in the upcoming school year.

In response to a question Thursday, Mayor Adams said there is “no desire” to surprise school communities with midyear cuts but added, “there’s no guarantees in life.”

That uncertainty may lead some school leaders to tighten their belts if they anticipate anemic enrollment. Overall, the city is projecting a relatively small enrollment drop of 0.6%, suggesting deep cuts are unlikely on most campuses.

Funding restored to child care for undocumented families

The budget will include $16 million for Promise NYC, which covers up to $700 a week in child care for hundreds of low-income undocumented immigrant families. Adams had proposed cutting Promise NYC despite touting it in December when it launched.

The program used $10 million in six months to fully cover child care for about 600 children. Hundreds of more families are on waitlists, according to organizations running the program. Some newly arrived mothers told Chalkbeat that Promise NYC has allowed them to work and pursue education.

The $16 million included in the budget deal falls $4 million short of what immigration advocates and elected officials had sought. But it’s expected to continue covering the 600 children currently enrolled, city officials said.

Mental health support program saved at last moment

The budget includes $5 million for partnerships between schools and mental health clinics, creating a streamlined process for referring students to counseling. The money was initially left out of the mayor’s budget proposal.

The program, known as the Mental Health Continuum, includes just 50 schools. But amid growing concern about a slide in student mental health, advocates had pressed to save it and pointed out that the mayor’s own mental health plan highlighted the initiative.

The Mental Health Continuum is also meant to reduce 911 calls from school staff by training them to address students experiencing emotional crises. Those calls disproportionately affect Black students, and can result in handcuffing or unwarranted trips to the emergency room for psychiatric evaluation.

City to pilot extended hours for pre-kindergarten

The budget will include $15 million to change 1,800 to 1,900 seats for 3-year-olds so that they offer extended hours.

Many working parents need child care beyond 3 p.m. A survey by the Citizens’ Committee for Children, found one-third of more than 1,000 respondents said they were looking for child care from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. However, there were 11,000 unfilled pre-K seats that had longer hours year-round, education department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer told Chalkbeat in May.

The pilot program will also extend beyond the school year, according to Speaker Adams’ office.

Caregivers “need preschool programs that align with their work days,” Mayor Adams said.

No plans to expand pre-K for 3-year-olds

The final budget reflects the mayor’s decision to halt a two-year $568 million expansion of preschool seats for 3-year-olds, instead opting to move seats to places with more demand, city officials confirmed.

Education officials have pointed to vacant seats: nearly 23,500 3-K seats are so far unfilled for next school year, according to department figures. The mayor’s decision has drawn backlash from City Council members and advocates, who say the city is not effectively recruiting families or funding early childhood education programs.

Questions remain about the mayor’s savings plan

As broad reductions to city agencies, the mayor required the education department to find hundreds of millions in cuts. It found $305 million, one of the largest savings, by recalculating spending on fringe benefits, such as health insurance for teachers. City officials have said those cuts would not reduce benefits to educators but reflected lower-than-expected growth in those costs.

But advocates worry that the city had already been using those savings to pay for other things, such as transportation, special education services, and charter school costs.

“We are concerned about where the DOE will find funding to pay for these expenses in the coming year and the impact on other programs and services that students need,” Randi Levine, policy director at Advocates for Children, wrote in an email.

City officials did not say whether other programs will face cuts.

Looking ahead: Concerns loom as federal dollars dry up

Future budget cycles are likely to be even more contentious, as federal relief funding dries up and city officials have to make difficult decisions about whether and how to continue programs that depend on those dollars.

Perhaps the most contentious decision will be whether to slash school budgets on campuses that have seen enrollment plunge but have been kept steady by temporary relief money. Mayor Adams had previously argued that school budgets need to be incrementally reduced to be brought in line with their current enrollment, but after instituting one round of cuts he faced intense criticism and has since backed away from making further reductions — for now.

The federal money supports a slew of other efforts including hiring more social workers and psychologists; expanding summer school programs; adding preschool seats for students with disabilities, a chronic shortage area; and increasing the number of schools that host wraparound services such as food pantries and health clinics. It’s not certain how these programs will be funded after this year.

Correction (Friday, June 30): A previous version of this story said the education department’s budget would likely decline by roughly $1 billion, a cut that was included in the mayor’s budget proposal in April. A City Hall spokesperson initially indicated that there were no major changes in the final budget deal. But after this story was published, officials said the final budget includes several funding streams that were not initially accounted for in the mayor’s earlier proposal, meaning the overall education budget will hold steady rather than face a cut. The headline has also been changed to reflect that.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering NYC public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Mayor Adams touts deep breathing as advocates press to restore school counseling program

2023-06-27T20:11:55+00:00

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As students face severe mental health challenges in the wake of the pandemic, New York City officials touted a new effort on Tuesday to help students regulate themselves: two to five minutes of breathing exercises every day beginning next school year.

But the last-day-of-school announcement left some advocates scratching their heads, arguing the mayor has neglected some other elements of his own broader mental health plan and has offered few details about others.

City officials previously floated the breathing exercises in January and Mayor Eric Adams framed them as just one piece of “low-hanging fruit” in a larger mental health push. “It is going to give them a tool that they can use for the rest of their lives,” the mayor said on Tuesday at P.S. 5 in Brooklyn, before participating in a student-led breathing exercise.

Student mental health concerns have grown since the coronavirus pandemic upended nearly all aspects of students’ lives. Many children lost access to the social circles and sense of community that schools offer. Thousands experienced the deaths of loved ones. A growing number of students have struggled to make it to school at all, leading to a spike in chronic absenteeism. And some educators have seen a rise in behavioral issues, including getting high during the school day.

But as the city heads into the summer it has yet to reveal much about a major effort to connect high school students to teletherapy, despite announcing it six months ago. And the mayor’s budget does not include funding for a $5 million program that establishes partnerships between schools and mental health clinics and offers a streamlined process for referring students to counseling.

Adams touted the program, known as the Mental Health Continuum, in his own mental health blueprint. But it is now the subject of a battle with the City Council, whose leaders have pledged to fight to restore the money in the city budget due this month.

“Five million will evaporate at the end of this week if the city doesn’t restore it in the final budget,” said Dawn Yuster, director of the School Justice Project at Advocates for Children. “They have already hired clinicians,” she added. “To rip them away from students and schools would be really devastating.”

Though the Mental Health Continuum has started small with about 50 schools in Brooklyn and the Bronx, advocates say the approach is promising. Participating schools receive training to help staff calm students who are in crisis and connect them to mobile crisis teams and mental health clinics, a partnership between the health and education departments as well as the city’s public hospital system.

One goal is to reduce schools’ reliance on dialing 911 when students are struggling to regulate their emotions, a practice that can be traumatic and counterproductive.

Under a legal settlement, schools are only supposed to use 911 as a last resort when students are in imminent danger, though a recent investigation by ProPublica and THE CITY found schools continue to call safety agents and police thousands of times a year to deal with students in distress, often tangling students up with law enforcement and needless emergency room visits. Those incidents disproportionately involve Black students, who are also more likely to be handcuffed.

Nelson Mar, an attorney at Bronx Legal Services who supports the Mental Health Continuum, said it has previously been subject to budget uncertainty and hopes the money is ultimately restored.

“The Mental Health Continuum has been funded largely by City Council putting it back in the budget in the last two years,” he said, adding he was puzzled by the omission from the mayor’s budget.

A City Hall spokesperson said the mental health program has been funded one year at a time but didn’t say if the city plans to restore it.

Mar and others said deep-breathing exercises could be a useful part of the city’s approach to student well-being. And some educators previously told Chalkbeat they can help students regulate their mood, decrease anxiety, and help them feel ready to learn — though experts said there is little evidence about how the routines affect student achievement.

But more broadly, Mar said, “we need a more systematic approach toward improving emotional health, behavioral health, and mental health within the school setting. It is going to take more than just deep-breathing exercises.”

Some advocates are also still waiting for more details about the mayor’s plan to connect high schools students to teletherapy services, something Adams described in January as “the biggest student mental health program in the country.”

Schools Chancellor David Banks said on Tuesday that high school students will have access to an app that allows them to “be in touch with mental health counselors in real time from their phones.” But city officials have not said how the platform will work, what type of mental health services will be available, who will be eligible, and how it will be monitored.

Dr. Elisa English, the chief program officer at Counseling in Schools, said she is eager for more information about what those services will look like, including how frequently students will have access to counselors.

“How that will roll out — it remains to be seen,” she said.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.