Chalkbeat

NYC school board rejects $1.65 million tech deal in early setback for Mamdani

2026-08-28T21:14:19+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

New York City’s school board failed to approve a technology contract advanced by Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration this week, a month after Mamdani’s slate of board members began their terms.

The $1.65 million contract would allow the Education Department to continue using Oracle software that supports “mission critical” functions including an HR help center serving more than 150,000 employees and an enrollment support center fielding roughly 1,000 calls a day about issues ranging from student transportation to special education, officials said. Losing access to the software could result in lost data and prevent families from accessing enrollment information online, a department spokesperson added.

But after fierce pushback against Oracle and its co-founder Larry Ellison during the board’s public comment period, including over the company’s investment in artificial intelligence, city officials could not muster the votes to approve the contract.

Two mayoral appointees to the Panel for Educational Policy, as the board is known, abstained from the vote. Three other mayoral appointees did not attend the meeting. The contract failed with nine votes in favor, six opposed, and two abstentions, falling four votes short of the 13 needed to pass.

Shortly before the vote, Deputy Chancellor Lindsay Oates, who oversees human resources, urged the board to approve the contract. She argued that the Education Department relies on Oracle for HR systems that are essential as the city welcomes thousands of new hires to the nation’s largest school system.

“Many of them are coming in and calling the call center with questions about their benefits,” she said. “We are worried about the disruption of service if this contract is tabled.”

Education Department officials said the service would run through September. They did not elaborate on whether they have backup plans to avoid disruptions.

The contract represents a small part of the roughly $13 billion the Education Department spends on outside vendors. But the administration’s inability to secure enough votes for the deal suggests the board may not be a rubber stamp for the Mamdani administration’s agenda. Under previous administrations, the board has generally voted in line with the administration’s proposals, with some notable exceptions.

The vote also suggests that growing pressure on the panel to scrutinize AI and technology contracts could complicate efforts to continue using existing education technology or adopt new tools. Education Department officials have promised to release new guidelines for artificial intelligence and technology before the first day of school on Sept. 10.

In the run-up to the vote, several educators and other tech skeptics criticized the Oracle contract and Ellison, who has embraced AI and supported Donald Trump’s 2024 election bid.

Liat Olenick, a parent, educator, and climate activist, said she worried about the company’s environmental footprint connected to growing AI use. Though the city’s contract with Oracle indicates it would not include student- or teacher-facing AI products, Olenick wondered if there might be other AI applications embedded in it.

“Will Oracle services include AI use by administrators?” she asked before the vote. “Is it necessary to contract with a company that’s fueling the climate crisis and putting New York City students’ health and futures at risk?”

An Education Department spokesperson said there is “no AI use associated with this contract.” Reps for Oracle did not respond to a request for comment.

Others raised concerns about how Oracle would protect sensitive data, including names, addresses, and Social Security numbers. Education Department officials implemented Oracle’s cloud software service “as a proactive measure to safeguard this information,” rather than relying on email, according to contract documents.

One board member said she was reluctant to vote against the contract in part because Education Department contract documents say Oracle would be required to delete the department’s data from its systems within 90 days of the contract’s expiration.

Raysa Rodriguez, whom Mamdani appointed last month, said she took concerns about Oracle “very seriously” but felt it would be riskier to let the contract lapse. She said a new agreement would “further protect the data that we have.”

The two mayoral appointees who abstained, Crystal Vera-Montalvo and Karla Cordero, did not respond to requests for comment. Primo Lasana, another mayoral appointee, said he wished the contract had been tabled until a future meeting so the board could consider it more carefully. He ultimately voted in favor.

Some panel members elected by parent leaders said they voted against the contract because they believed the city should control its sensitive technology systems.

“The staff that manages it should be public servants,” said panel member Naveed Hasan.

Panel chair Greg Faulkner, whose term ends in September, said in an interview that he was frustrated by the vote and worried the Education Department would be forced to scramble to fix its HR systems. But he acknowledged that panel members are feeling pressure to be cautious around tech contracts.

“Anything we do with technology gets scrutinized,” Faulkner said.

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

NYC schools head toward first day without gradebooks and other software amid tech freeze

2026-08-26T20:27:04+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

After intense backlash to its initial artificial intelligence policy, New York City’s Education Department ordered principals last month to halt software purchases while officials develop new guidelines.

But the city has yet to release a new policy or lift the purchasing freeze despite the approaching Sept. 10 start of school. Principals are increasingly worried they won’t have access to key software programs — including electronic gradebooks and platforms teachers use to communicate with families — for the first day.

Four public school administrators, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid reprisal, said they have been unable to make routine software purchases, even for programs they’ve used for years that do not rely on AI.

“Two weeks before the start of school, we’re not sure what we’re going to be allowed to have and not allowed to have,” said one Brooklyn high school principal. “It’s a huge pain.”

Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels announced the moratorium on software purchases in early July to give the city time to develop a stronger AI policy. An initial set of guidelines released in March ignited fierce pushback from families who said it did not do enough to limit AI, especially for young children.

Samuels later acknowledged the policy “missed the mark” and indicated the final guidance would include clearer limits. An Education Department spokesperson did not respond to questions for this story, including about when the guidance will be released or when software purchases may resume.

That uncertainty is causing headaches for school leaders, who often use basic education software tools that require annual purchase orders.

School leaders said they have been unable to renew subscriptions to digital hall passes or electronic gradebooks, raising fears the programs will not be available for students’ return.

Another administrator was unable to order software programs designed to help students who need more support in reading and math, including i-Ready, a major tech platform. Separately, the Education Department provides schools with access to i-Ready for required student assessments.

“I’m concerned about the operation of the school,” a second high school principal said.

Samuels initially suggested that software tools required for “mandated services or school opening needs” would be exempt from the pause, though multiple principals said they have not yet heard back about their requests to buy software during the freeze.

Some experts said the city has good reasons to be cautious about pressing ahead with education software tools, given concerns around student privacy, data breaches, and the proliferation of AI tools and chatbots added to products that schools have long used.

But Tom Liam Lynch, an expert who previously worked on education technology for the Education Department, said the city is behind the curve in developing a clear digital learning strategy.

“It’s really late in the game for the city to be figuring this out,” he said, noting the school system has struggled to adapt to AI.

He said that there are risks to releasing guidance so close to the start of the school. Principals typically plan well in advance of September and the last-minute technology policy could upend choices schools have already made about how to support teachers and students.

“Schools are unfortunately going to be in a position where they have to scramble with this,” he said. “That doesn’t lead to what you really want when it comes to quality pedagogy.”

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

Rift widens between City Hall and teachers union as UFT threatens literacy curriculum pushback

2026-08-12T22:25:28+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

When New York City officials launched a big shakeup in reading instruction three years ago, they had a key ally at their side: the city’s teachers union.

Now, shortly after a plunge in reading scores, United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew is threatening to drop the union’s support of the curriculum overhaul.

That could complicate Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plans to expand the initiative, known as NYC Reads.

“The Department of Ed. is completely incompetent and irresponsible in its implementation, and we are not going to stand by,” the union chief said in an interview, pointing to a series of tasks piling up for teachers as they adopt the curriculum changes. Without reforms, “we’re going to just have to pull our support for it.”

Mulgrew’s criticism of the reading curriculum is the latest point of tension between the union and City Hall. Mamdani recently backtracked on campaign pledges to support a boost in pay for paraprofessionals and swiftly reduce class sizes — both major union priorities.

Mulgrew said he still thinks it is a good idea to require common reading curriculums in all elementary schools instead of giving each principal the authority to pick their own, the biggest shift under NYC Reads. But other burdensome requirements have been layered on top of the mandate, he said.

He criticized the number of student assessments — at least three every year in reading — as excessive. Another point of contention: As of last year, schools must use additional city-approved intervention programs for struggling readers, a major priority of Chancellor Kamar Samuels. Those programs, however, don’t always line up with the reading curriculums, Mulgrew said.

Mulgrew also accused the city of rolling back earlier promises to give teachers flexibility to implement the curriculum at a pace that makes sense for their students and schedule.

An Education Department spokesperson said the union’s claims are untrue, noting there were no changes in the district’s assessment or pacing policies last year. The only change was to require that schools use approved intervention programs, officials said.

Mulgrew’s comments came days after officials revealed that just half the city’s students in grades 3-8 were proficient in reading on the state tests administered in the spring, a decline of 6 percentage points from the year before.

Even as union officials initially blamed the test score decline on flaws with the Education Department’s implementation of NYC Reads, Mulgrew said he does not believe the tests accurately measure student learning. (Some experts have raised questions about whether the unusually large fluctuations reflect problems with the test.)

The reading curriculum overhaul has won mixed reactions from educators. Some have welcomed the changes as long overdue, while others have been frustrated with the programs city officials have required them to use.

Still, Mulgrew’s comments came as a surprise to some teachers.

“What he’s saying is coming out of nowhere,” said Kate Gutwillig, who retired from Manhattan’s P.S. 134 in June.

She agreed with Mulgrew’s criticism that schools are being asked to assess students too often using tools that don’t map well onto the school’s curriculum.

Still, the notion that there were major changes in how NYC Reads was implemented last year “does not ring true to my experience,” she said.

Other observers said it would be a significant blow if the union dropped its support of the initiative, which includes union-supported and city-funded centers that offer training connected to NYC Reads.

“Right now, they are a core implementation partner,” said Evan Stone, CEO of Educators for Excellence, a teacher advocacy group that supports the curriculum changes.

“I don’t think it stops the program” if the union pulls its support, Stone said, noting that the city has pressed ahead with a math curriculum overhaul over the union’s objections. “But it certainly doesn’t make the work easier.”

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

NYC is acting faster on special education legal orders but still misses most deadlines

2026-08-10T19:20:52+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

New York City has long failed to quickly provide special education services even after families won legal orders for them, generating more than two decades of litigation.

Three years ago, city officials embraced a federal court order requiring dozens of reforms to more swiftly provide services like speech therapy, tutoring, or tuition payments for students who can’t be properly served in public schools. But a key question has been surprisingly difficult to answer: Is the city actually providing services to students with disabilities more quickly?

New data from independent auditors offers good news and bad news: More families are getting services and other payments within court-mandated deadlines — but the Education Department still blows past the legal timeframes in the vast majority of cases.

“There has been some improvement,” said Rebecca Shore, the litigation director at Advocates for Children, which brought a class action lawsuit in 2003 that sparked additional court oversight. At the same time, she said, the city is “nowhere near” full compliance.

When families believe they aren’t getting the right special education services they can file a legal complaint against the city that is adjudicated by an administrative judge, known as an impartial hearing officer. Caregivers were on track to file under 16,000 cases last school year, officials said at a City Council hearing in June. When families prevail, the Education Department typically must comply with the order within 35 days, the deadline established in a 2007 legal settlement, unless a hearing officer offers a different timeline.

Orders for services like speech therapy, counseling, and transportation were implemented on time in just over 36% of cases according to a recent audit that focused on cases with deadlines in January. That’s up from a compliance rate of 7.2% during the first months of 2023, just before a Manhattan federal judge ordered the city to make a series of reforms to speed up the process.

The Education Department provided on time payments — which can offer funding for private school tuition, outside evaluations, and tutoring — in just under 13% of cases in January. That represents a jump from early 2023, when orders were implemented on time in just 4.1% of cases. (The regular quarterly audits are running roughly two years behind; the auditor conducted a narrower one-month review of cases with deadlines in January.)

“We have made substantial progress by improving core processes, increasing staffing capacity, and advancing critical technology upgrades, all of which support a stronger and more responsive system,” Education Department spokesperson Onika Richards wrote in an email.

She added that the city remains “committed to meeting our obligations” but did not respond to a question about whether the city plans to reach full compliance. In some cases, officials contend that delays stem from families or their advocates not submitting paperwork on time.

Delays continue in most cases

Still, many families continue to experience delays after receiving a favorable ruling from a hearing officer, according to caregivers and their legal advocates.

Nilda Ferrer, a Bronx mom, said she had to wait for the Education Department to line up transportation for her teenage daughter, who has autism and anxiety and struggled with claustrophobia. Her bus ride to a private school in New Jersey, which she attends at no cost because there isn’t an appropriate public school for her, sometimes stretched roughly two hours, Ferrer said.

Bronx mom Nilda Ferrer and her 17-year-old daughter, Nilda.

After unsuccessfully lobbying for the city to find a more manageable transportation option, she filed a legal complaint seeking a taxi service with help from a lawyer at Legal Services NYC. She was thrilled when the family won the case last December.

“I thought that that would be the end of it,” said Ferrer, who works as a home health aide. Instead, it took weeks for the city to implement the service in response to the order. Her daughter wound up missing school as a result, compounding existing struggles with school refusal. (Citing privacy concerns, city Education Department officials declined to comment on the case.)

The family will likely have to file another legal complaint this coming school year, as the city did not include the taxi service on her daughter’s special education learning plan. “Now we have to fight it all over again,” Ferrer said. “It doesn’t make sense to me because her situation is not changing.”

NYC has yet to complete 21 court-ordered reforms

It remains to be seen whether the city will continue making progress on implementing special education orders more quickly.

Officials have been slow to comply with the 2023 order requiring the city to modernize its special education implementation system, after a court-appointed special master found it relied on antiquated technology and manual data entry.

City officials have yet to complete 21 of the 51 reforms required under the 2023 federal court order, according to a special master report released last month, including a technology overhaul of a case management system that missed its March launch date and does not currently have a timeline for completion.

David Irwin of Thru Consulting LLC, the court-appointed special master, credited the city with hiring staff, committing resources, and making some technological progress, including launching a customer service portal for families and their attorneys that offers case information.

“The leadership in DOE is very engaged in this,” Irwin said, noting that he meets with Chancellor Kamar Samuels every month.

Still, city officials are simultaneously trying to revise some of the requirements that stretch back to a 2007 court settlement, arguing the terms of that agreement are outdated.

The Education Department is pushing to loosen the 35-day legal window, according to a recent court filing. They want to exclude certain private school cases from the court settlement’s requirements, including timelines and auditing rules. And they are pushing to scale back the independent audits that measure their performance, such as assessing only a sample of cases for timeliness, in part because the audits are expensive and delayed. The auditing firm cost the city $6.6 million in 2025 alone.

Lawyers representing families, including Shore of Advocates for Children, criticized those proposals in a court filing.

“Rather than focusing on improving its implementation rates,” the lawyers wrote, “the DOE is asking this Court for shortcuts.”

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

NYC reading scores sink, with third grade proficiency falling 14 points

2026-08-07T20:42:44+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Reading scores sank in New York City last school year, with a nearly 14 percentage point decline among third graders, according to preliminary data released Friday.

Among students in grades 3-8, about half were proficient in reading, a decline of 6 percentage points. That nearly erases a 7 percentage point spike the year before. Math scores were flat, with 57% of students considered proficient.

The declines in reading proficiency were most pronounced in grades 3-5. In addition to the dramatic decline in third grade, fourth grade scores fell nearly 6 percentage points, and fifth grade scores fell by 13 points. (You can find your school’s test results at the bottom of this story.)

The unusually steep drop in reading proficiency comes as the city is heading into its fourth year of a major shakeup in literacy instruction. All elementary schools are required to use approved curriculums that officials contend line up with the science of reading, a longstanding body of evidence about how children learn to read. A growing number of middle schools are in the process of adopting new reading curriculums, too.

City officials vowed to conduct an analysis of the sharp fluctuations in reading scores.

“School leaders across New York City are seeing dramatic swings in literacy proficiency reflected in this year’s state assessment results,” schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels said in a statement. “These results raise important questions and deserve careful, rigorous analysis so we can ensure we’re measuring what students are learning.”

City officials noted that the state test scores diverged from the city’s own periodic assessments, which generally showed improvements in reading.

The city’s teachers union has supported the elementary reading curriculum changes, but criticized the Education Department’s approach in response to the latest scores.

“We have to refocus on what we know works in literacy — a clear plan, a tailored science of reading curriculum, and meaningful professional development for educators,” Mary Vaccaro, the union’s vice president for education, said in a statement.

She said the Education Department “abandoned that approach” last year and “piled on additional programs, assessments, consultant’s recommendations and curriculum in the hopes that ‘more’ would equal better, and we lost ground.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has vowed to double down on the literacy and math curriculum overhauls launched by his predecessor. In May, he announced plans to expand the math curriculum mandate into elementary schools, a move the union also criticized.

Test scores alone can’t prove whether a policy is working because many factors influence them. But city officials pointed to the dramatic 7 percentage point spike last year as evidence the new reading programs are paying dividends.

The reading proficiency declines mirror a similar 5 percentage point drop across the state. Some testing experts told Chalkbeat this week that whipsawing scores are unusual and raise questions about whether there are irregularities in the exams.

Andrew Ho, a Harvard professor who serves on a panel of experts who are paid to advise New York on its state assessment system, said the state exams are carefully constructed.

“It’s uncommon but not unprecedented” to see test scores significantly shift up and down, Ho said.

Observers should consider them in the context of other data, including the city’s own assessments and the National Assessment of Educational Progress, widely considered the gold standard assessment. A new round of results on that federal exam, including for New York City, are expected next year.

Others worried that there was an unidentified problem with the tests. Emily Oster, a professor of economics at Brown University who has studied patterns in state assessment results, said the swings were reminiscent of COVID-era disruptions but without an obvious cause.

“It’s just so implausible that there would be these kind of swings, and that they would be concentrated in some grades and some subjects and not others,” she said. “It just feels like there’s a mistake.”

EdTrust-New York, an advocacy group, called for an independent audit of the last three years of state testing data. “NYSED never adequately investigated or explained last year’s dramatic gains, making this year’s reversal difficult to interpret,” the group said in a statement earlier this week.

A spokesperson for the state’s Education Department said that the state conducts two independent audits of its assessments each year and those reviews have not flagged any problems.

As in prior years, the test results show deep disparities between student groups.

Asian American students saw the largest declines in reading scores last year among racial groups, with proficiency rates dropping to about 67%, down nearly 8 percentage points. A similar share of white students were considered proficient in reading.

Meanwhile, nearly 42% of Black students were proficient, a decline of 5 percentage points. About 37% of Latino students were marked proficient, 6 percentage points lower than the prior year. Just under 22% of students with disabilities were proficient readers.

Students who are currently learning English, or were in the past, saw the largest reading dips. Their proficiency rates dipped nearly 10 percentage points to 62.1%.

Math scores were more stable. Almost 44% of Black and Latino students were proficient in the subject, up less than 1 percentage point respectively. White and Asian American students’ scores dipped by about a percentage point each, to 74% and nearly 80%, respectively.

Curious about school-level test results? Here is a searchable breakdown of math and English scores across all of the city’s public schools (charters are not included).

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

Mayor Zohran Mamdani names 13 school board members, cementing control of NYC schools

2026-07-28T18:58:17+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani appointed 13 people to the city’s school board Tuesday, cementing his control over the panel that votes on major policy changes, contracts, and decisions to merge or close schools.

The appointees to the Panel for Educational Policy bring a range of professional experience, including an environmental justice advocate and a budget official at the MTA. Others have more traditional education policy backgrounds, including a former early childhood policy official who worked under former Mayor Bill de Blasio. Several are current or former public school parents.

Mamdani also reappointed three members who served under former Mayor Eric Adams. The terms of Adams’ appointees ended last month. (See a full list of Mamdani’s appointees below.)

“Public schools belong to New Yorkers, and the families, students and educators who make them what they are deserve a real voice in the decisions that shape them,” Mamdani said in a statement. “The Panel for Educational Policy has a vital responsibility to help guide our school system with transparency and accountability.”

Under state law, the mayor has the power to appoint 13 of the board’s 24 members and pick the chair from a list provided by state lawmakers. The current chair’s term does not expire until September. Parent leaders select five members, and each of the five borough presidents appoints one.

That structure gives Mamdani direct authority over the school system, a power he campaigned on giving up to make the system more democratic, though he never sketched out a clear alternative. He abandoned that position shortly before taking office and successfully lobbied state lawmakers for a two-year extension of mayoral control in the most recent state budget.

Under Mamdani, the panel will likely consider a range of hot-button issues, and advocates are already gearing up to influence the new board.

A group pushing for a moratorium on artificial intelligence in the city’s public schools plans to rally outside Wednesday’s panel meeting, the first that will feature Mamdani’s new appointees. The board has previously been skeptical of AI, and the city is developing new guidance on how the technology can be used in classrooms. The city delayed releasing the guidance due to overwhelming pushback, but officials said they planned to release it before this fall.

The panel will also have to grapple with how to approach declining enrollment in the nation’s largest school system. Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels has indicated the city may need to ramp up school mergers and closures, but such proposals often spark fierce backlash, with parents, students, and educators packing board meetings in protest.

Historically, mayoral appointees tend to vote in line with the mayor and his schools chancellor. Mamdani, however, has vowed to listen to community input. It remains to be seen if that posture will give his appointees more room to vote independently of City Hall’s wishes. The mayor can no longer remove his own board members simply for voting against his proposals under a 2022 tweak in state law.

Adams sometimes struggled to control the board, which more frequently bucked City Hall’s proposals than panels under previous mayors. Toward the end of his term, Adams allowed three mayoral appointees on the board to sit vacant, effectively giving up his majority.

Under recent changes to the board’s structure, mayoral appointees serve one-year terms that expire at the end of June. That makes Mamdani the first mayor required to work with board members appointed under his predecessor for his first six months in office. Although Mamdani could have filled two mayoral vacancies that Adams left open, he mostly allowed them to sit empty in recent months. He appointed one member, Brooklyn College professor Maddy Fox, in time for the June board meeting.

Greg Faulkner, the panel’s current chair who was appointed by Adams, said he was impressed with the new slate of board members.

“I’m excited by this new group — the diversity and experience is really great," he said.

Here are the members Mamdani appointed, according to a press release issued Tuesday afternoon. The three members Mamdani reappointed are Alan Ong, Marjorie Dienstag, and Amy Fair.

Karla Cordero

Cordero is chief of staff at WE ACT for Environmental Justice, which fights for climate justice in low-income areas of West Harlem and upper Manhattan. She previously worked in government and helped launch an emergency food program during the COVID pandemic that delivered more than 18 million meals to New Yorkers.

Tariq Khan

Khan has spent nearly three decades at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, where he now works in budget and finance. The Queens resident has also been active as a parent leader in his local school communities.

Mehrain Mahdi

Mahdi, a parent in Manhattan’s District 2, served on her school’s leadership team, where she launched an after-school Spanish program. She also founded Little Leaping Leaders, a mentorship program for young girls.

Alan Ong

Ong, a longtime civic leader in Queens, has served as a parent-teacher association president and as president of District 26’s Community Education Council. He previously was an Adams’ appointee on the PEP.

Amy Fair

Fair has worked in higher education administration for more than 25 years and is the director of strategic initiatives and special projects at NYU Steinhardt. She has also served on the community education council in Bronx District 11 “and in several community leadership roles supporting students, families and schools,” according to her official bio.

Courtney Rajwani

Rajwani, the parent of two public school children, is a managing consultant at the Lewin Group, a healthcare consulting firm. Under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, she was an executive director for policy development and support in the city Education Department’s early childhood division.

Crystal Vera-Montalvo

Vera-Montalvo is the director of community educational engagement at the College of Staten Island. She oversees a slew of programs, including English as a second language, continuing education, GED, as well as other initiatives geared toward older adults and people with disabilities. She is the parent of a current New York City public school student.

Marjorie Dienstag

Dienstag’s three children have attended both public and private schools, including one who currently attends a District 75 school, which serves children with more complex disabilities. She led a grassroots push to build a West Village middle school that includes a program for District 75 students.

Lucas Koehler

Koehler previously worked as a seventh-grade math teacher in the Bronx and is now the chief financial officer at the Foundation for City College. His bio credits him with playing a “key role in expanding New York City’s early childhood education system.” He also previously worked in the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget.

Primo Lasana

Before becoming chief impact officer at the Forum for Youth Investment, a nonprofit focused on youth development, Lasana was the executive director of Reading Partners and director of new site development at iMentor. He’s also been active on his Brooklyn community board.

Kristin Jefferson

Jefferson is a senior education consultant at Teaching Matters, a nonprofit that works with schools to improve reading and math instruction through training and coaching. She also founded KJ-Ed Solutions LLC, an education consulting firm. She previously was the academic director and network multilingual learner coordinator at Explore Charter Schools and director of recruitment for the Education Department’s Office of New Schools. 

Maddy Fox

Fox is a Brooklyn College professor who studies children and youth as well as sociology and is a faculty member at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is a “union member and participatory action researcher whose work focuses on partnering with young people and communities to shape public policy,” according to her official bio. Fox has two children in the city’s public schools.

Raysa Rodriguez

Rodriguez is the executive director of the Citizens’ Committee for Children, an advocacy and research organization. She previously worked at other nonprofits, including the United Way of New York City. During the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, she was a senior adviser on children’s issues for the deputy mayor for health and human services. She was born and raised in the Bronx and is a former kindergarten teacher.

Alex Zimmerman is a senior 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.

Wildfire smoke forces Summer Rising indoors as officials limit outdoor activities

2026-07-16T19:10:30+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

New York City officials urged summer school programs to limit outdoor activity on Thursday as wildfire smoke wafted into the five boroughs.

The Education Department’s guidance to principals also asked schools to reschedule outdoor trips.

The city’s summer school program, known as Summer Rising, has slots for about 110,000 elementary and middle school students this year, offering a mix of academics, enrichment activities, and trips.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani warned in a social media post that the “combination of dangerous heat and unhealthy air is a serious threat to New Yorkers’ health.”

Thursday’s pivot indoors marked the latest heat- or smoke-related disruption to the city’s public schools. During a heat wave earlier this month, summer programs were instructed to cancel outdoor field trips on July 1 and July 2, according to an internal email obtained by Chalkbeat. In June 2023, the school system switched to remote instruction for a day due to wildfire smoke (though most students already had the day off).

Education Department officials said they follow Health Department guidelines on air quality to make decisions about whether outdoor activities are safe for children. They did not indicate whether they plan to issue a similar warning for Friday when the smoke is expected to ease.

One Brooklyn principal supervising a summer school site, who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak candidly, said the heat and smoke has led them to limit outdoor activities on about half of the days of this year’s summer program, which began July 1 and ends Aug. 7 for middle school and Aug. 14 for elementary schools.

As a result, students are getting less time for recess, basketball, and soccer, because a larger number of students must rotate through the campus’s air conditioned gym. They’re playing games like “7 Up” instead.

“It’s really not ideal — there’s not as much space for free play inside,” the principal said, noting staying indoors is important because many of his students have asthma.

The principal did not receive the guidance that Education Department officials sent to school leaders in advance of the smoke on Thursday and was “literally going off the [New York City Emergency Management] text alerts I personally signed up for” to make decisions about when to limit indoor activities.

Grace Bodenmann, chief education officer at New York Junior Tennis & Learning, said her organization moved programming indoors at the 26 Summer Rising sites they work with as well as the two full-day camps they run at charter schools. They made the move based on instructions from the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development, which sent out two emails Thursday morning, she said.

“It’s not that fun to be in a school from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.,” Bodenmann said, noting that while Summer Rising sites are required to have air conditioning, not all spaces in a building necessarily have AC, particularly some of the larger spaces such as auditoriums, cafeterias, and gyms. “It’s hit or miss,” she said. “And you can’t open the window.”

Under a recent state law, children are not allowed to be in school spaces that reach 88 degrees or higher.

Students at the New York Junior Tennis and Learning's ACES afterschool program at P.S. 9 in Brooklyn.

Another challenge: Some of the Summer Rising sites have multiple community organizations in one building jostling for space.

But it’s clear that families rely on the program: Attendance was barely down over the past two days, she said. Bodenmann was eager to find out what would happen on Friday, which is when many organizations organize field trips. Rescheduling those trips can be difficult.

Meanwhile, many of the air purifiers the city distributed to every school during the pandemic are gathering dust. Many educators have stopped using them because of concerns that the devices the city bought are noisy and are not as effective as other models. Although the city’s guidance to custodians directs them to keep windows and doors closed when possible and and check HVAC systems, it does not mention using the purifiers.

Some experts previously told Chalkbeat that school systems should think more intentionally about indoor air quality, especially in regions like the East Coast that have less experience responding to smoky conditions.

“On the West Coast, wildfire smoke has just been part of life for a while,” said Patricia Fabian, an associate professor of environmental health at Boston University. On the East Coast, “people have really only started talking about it in the last couple of years.”

Clean indoor air is important for student and staff health, she said. And while she wasn’t familiar with the purifiers New York City purchased for schools, she said that air purifiers can help filter particles and reduce the risk of wildfire smoke.

Alex Zimmerman is a senior 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 budget gives every public school kindergartner $1,000 for college, restores education programs

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

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

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

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

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 delays school AI guidance after backlash

2026-06-24T22:39:22+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

New York City education officials are hitting pause on releasing comprehensive artificial intelligence guidelines after their draft policy from March sparked fierce backlash.

Officials initially said their final guidance would be released in June, but backed away from that timeline during a Wednesday City Council hearing focused on AI in schools. Instead, the policy guidance will be released sometime this summer, First Deputy Chancellor Danielle Giunta said.

Giunta said the “shifting national conversation, which has really escalated over just the last couple of weeks alone” was one reason for the delay, along with nearly 6,500 comments responding to the March draft. Officials have not released those responses but told City Council members they would do so.

Worries about AI — and education technology in schools more broadly — have increased in recent months. More than half of City Council members signed a letter urging Mayor Zohran Mamdani and schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels to pause AI use in schools citing concerns about learning and mental health. A broader petition seeking a moratorium on generative AI use in city schools has received thousands of signatures.

The Education Department’s draft policy used a traffic light framework that spelled out various uses of AI and their risk levels. Assessments and grading are not allowed, for instance, but brainstorming lesson plans gets a green light. Student AI use was largely left out, even though it’s one of the most pressing issues schools face. In response to the draft policy, parents packed public meetings and largely criticized the approach.

Samuels, who did not attend Wednesday’s hearing, recently said that the Education Department’s draft policy “missed the mark” that AI “is the most invasive technology that we’ve seen.” He suggested the final guidance would have stricter limits for the city’s youngest students.

Giunta said Wednesday that the city is considering different expectations based on age and grade level and thinking about how to prepare older students “for a world in which AI is already present without allowing AI to replace their own thinking.”

City Council members repeatedly pressed Education Department officials about the extent to which AI tools are already used in classrooms and indicated families should have a greater say over how their children are exposed to it.

“There are huge gaps in our understanding of how the technology is being deployed and when,” said Manhattan council member Carmen De La Rosa, who chairs the technology committee. “We do need the time to be able to wrap our arms around what is happening in our classrooms.”

Education officials said they are working with superintendents and principals to develop a more comprehensive sense of what tools schools are already using.

The Education Department’s stance on AI has whipsawed in recent years. When ChatGPT gained widespread use, city officials blocked its use in schools in 2023. Three months later, they rescinded the ban.

Former schools Chancellor David Banks grew increasingly warm to the technology, saying “AI can revolutionize how we function as a school system” and could be used for everything from college advising to assessing student work. But he never released a clear policy, leaving that task to Mamdani and Samuels to complete. Meanwhile, schools have been left to devise their own approaches.

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

The other champions at the Knicks parade: NYC public school student basketball players

2026-06-18T22:06:06+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

As the New York Knicks marched through lower Manhattan Thursday morning with hundreds of thousands of fans cheering their first NBA title in 53 years, another set of underdogs followed behind: the Seward Park Campus varsity basketball team.

Seward ended its own yearslong championship drought in March, and the team’s four seniors scored a last-minute invite to join the parade as part of a broader delegation of eight Public Schools Athletic League championship teams.

After a near-sleepless night of anticipation, the students woke up at dawn. Within hours, they were atop a double decker bus traveling up Broadway’s Canyon of Heroes from Battery Park to City Hall. They hoisted their own championship trophy and tossed Knicks T-shirts into the roaring crowd, which drew more than 2 million people, police officials said.

It felt like the city was there to celebrate them, too.

Brooklyn Hollins, a member of the team who goes by “BK,” said onlookers asked them to sign autographs and pose for photos, catching him off guard. “I don’t have the signature ready, so I just wrote BK number 20,” he said. “Everybody was just showing love.”

Fans also recognized the school. “It was so many people saying that they went to Seward, they played against Seward,” Hollins said.

And just as the Knicks’ championship win brought New York City residents together, Seward’s championship helped bring its Lower East Side campus closer, said coach Katey Wentworth.

Once a large comprehensive high school, Seward Park is now home to five separate schools that share a building, part of a small schools movement under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The four Seward Park seniors who participated in the parade each attend different schools but play together on the campuswide basketball team.

“This was a really unifying experience for our campus,” said Wentworth, who teaches at New Design High School and has coached the team for a decade.

Wentworth also felt like she had something to prove.

“There’s a lot of conversation about a woman coaching men,” she said. “I felt very validated.”

Along the parade route, the team didn’t meet any current Knicks players. But they spotted Patrick Ewing, a Knicks legend who played on the team for 15 seasons and retired in 2000.

Seniors from the Seward Park varsity boys basketball team and their coach Katey Wentworth pose with their Public Schools Athletic League championship trophy outside of the Education Department's Lower Manhattan headquarters on Thursday.

Seward teammate Lucas Bernstein rushed to FaceTime his dad, a longtime Ewing fan. He didn’t pick up. A selfie would have to suffice.

In the runup to the parade, some New York City public school families pleaded with city officials to reschedule so it wouldn’t fall during school hours and during Regents exams set for Thursday morning — state tests students must pass to graduate high school. (The seniors on the Seward Park team already completed their exams.)

Several schools near the parade route experienced significant logistical headaches. Educators said many families were not allowed to pass through police barricades. At least one campus planned to request a make-up day for students who couldn’t get to class.

Attendance across the city’s public schools dropped on Thursday to about 84.8% down from about 89.3% Wednesday — likely owing to the parade and the start of a long weekend. (Schools are closed Friday for Juneteenth.)

For their part, students from the Seward team felt hopeful that their championship and parade appearance could help bolster their campus’ image as a destination for basketball talent.

“It’s not just the big-name schools that produce good players,” said team member Roy Duran. “Here at Seward Park, we actually hoop.”

They said the experience on Thursday will stick with them for a long time.

“I’m gonna remember this in 60 years, 70 years, 80 years — I’m gonna remember this for the rest of my life,” Bernstein said. “We were in the Knicks parade.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney contributed.

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

NY lawmakers to give Mamdani 2-year extension to comply with NYC class size mandate

2026-06-01T21:09:51+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

A widely anticipated last-minute deal will give New York City two additional years to comply with a state law to shrink classes, according to legislation introduced Monday.

And in a separate agreement between the United Federation of Teachers and the city’s Education Department announced Monday, educators will be eligible for a pay bump if their classes are above the caps, union officials said.

The 2022 state law had required the city to cap 80% of its classrooms by this fall at 20 to 25 students, depending on grade level. By the 2027-28 school year, all classes were expected to meet the mandate. Now, the city will instead have to bring 70% of its classes into compliance this school year with an additional 10% in each of the next three school years, giving the city until the 2029-30 school year to meet the mandate.

Those changes — which state, city, and union officials have been negotiating for months — are a significant part of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to balance the city’s budget. City officials banked on the delayed rollout of the law to save hundreds of millions of dollars to help close a multibillion dollar budget gap.

Mamdani’s campaign to convince state officials to give the city more time to comply represented a departure from his campaign pledge to swiftly implement the class size law, which he accused former Mayor Eric Adams of slow-walking. Mamdani voted for the law when he was a member of the state assembly.

“I am proud that our administration is implementing it in good faith,” Mamdani said in a statement. “Extending this timeline gives our schools the opportunity to reduce class sizes in a way that is sustainable and responsible.”

The city’s teachers union acknowledged Monday that the city is unlikely to reach the 70% compliance rate without relying on exemptions allowed under the law. (This school year, the city relied on thousands of exemptions to meet the 60% threshold required by law.)

“If giving this new administration two more years gets us a partner committed to building the necessary seats, then it is the fastest way to turn the law into reality,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said in a statement.

The union secured an “accountability incentive” that will put financial pressure on the city to avoid exemptions in the long run, union officials said. In cases where the city issues exemptions from the law because a building doesn’t have additional space to shrink classes or can’t hire enough staff, teachers will be eligible for additional pay.

Neither the Education Department nor the union provided a copy of the agreement. But in a email to UFT members, union officials said teachers could be eligible for up to $8,500 next school year and $9,500 the following year. The recipients of the pay bumps will be determined each November and “not every teacher whose class is out of compliance with the class size limits will receive the differential,” the email noted.

The deal is likely to renew equity concerns, as more affluent schools tend to be more crowded and stand to benefit the most from the class size law. Union officials said additional pay would be distributed to schools based on their economic need, though it was not immediately clear how that would work.

“We hope a differential will be an incentive to do the recruitment, hiring, and construction needed to fulfill the law,” Mulgrew said.

An Education Department spokesperson did not respond to questions about the incentives.

The legislation extending the deadlines to comply with the class size law was initially expected to be folded into the state budget, which was finalized last week nearly two months past the April 1 deadline, but negotiations dragged on. The legislative session ends Thursday.

Calls for transparency on city’s class size plan

Research suggests smaller class sizes tend to boost student learning and are broadly popular with families and educators. But the law would benefit relatively more affluent schools the most because they tend to be more crowded, multiple analyses have found, sparking concern from the state’s education commissioner.

City officials have argued that reaching 80% compliance this fall would have been difficult without a major influx of funding. They also expressed doubt about whether the city could recruit thousands of additional teachers.

In Mamdani’s February preliminary budget, he earmarked $547 million in new spending to lower class sizes, and officials had previously indicated they would need to hire 6,000 additional teachers. But anticipating a rollback to the class size law, Mamdani’s executive budget plan released this month included just $122 million to hire 1,000 teachers.

The mayor’s budget proposal also added $1.5 billion in capital funding, as many schools need additional space in their current buildings to shrink classes.

The Education Department has so far avoided more contentious measures to reduce classes that could avoid costs associated with building new classrooms, such as capping enrollment at popular campuses and sending students to schools with empty seats or rethinking school zones.

State Sen. John Liu, a Queens lawmaker who championed the class size law and sponsored the changes to it, said he was open to giving the city more time to comply with the law if the Education Department came up with a clear plan. On Monday, Liu said in a statement he was satisfied the city had “clear and accountable teacher recruitment and classroom construction plans.”

But neither Liu nor the city’s Education Department provided copies of those plans, and some advocates for smaller classes demanded transparency.

“Let’s see the city’s class size plan to confirm it’s not all smoke and mirrors,” Leonie Haimson, the executive director of the advocacy group Class Size Matters, said in a statement. “At the very least, the Department of Education should have to present it before the [city] council votes on the education budget and the capital plan.” The city’s budget must be finalized by the end of the month.

Asked about the class size legislation, Gov. Kathy Hochul told reporters it will give the city “more breathing room to roll out the cost of it,” according to a transcript.

“This was a budget issue that the city asked the teachers for relief from,” she said.

This story has been updated with additional details about pay bumps that were sent to union members Monday afternoon.

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

NYC promises new scorecards and more efficient routes for dysfunctional school bus system

2026-05-18T21:10:54+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

New York City’s sprawling school bus system, notorious for no-show buses and hourslong routes, may soon get a software overhaul that has been in the works for years to make routes more efficient.

“We’re pressure testing it to release this September,” Kevin Moran, the deputy chancellor for school operations, told families of children with disabilities at a town hall meeting last month.

And beginning in June, the city plans to release “vendor scorecards” that rate bus companies on a slew of metrics, including driver safety and staffing levels.

Officials say they are finally following through on promises to modernize the bus system, which includes some 9,000 routes operated by about 52 different companies at a cost of more than $2 billion a year — nearly $13,800 per rider.

Any improvements would help some of the city’s most vulnerable students. Of the 145,000 students reliant on yellow bus service, roughly 43% are children with disabilities. When the system falters, students often miss out on instruction and may become chronically absent.

Even as some families are cautiously optimistic that the new administration is taking school bus problems seriously, they are also wary after years of promises that have yet to fully materialize.

“Do I believe this is moving somewhere different than what we’ve seen before? Yes,” said Christi Angel, president of the parent council for District 75, a network of public schools that serve students with more complex disabilities. On the other hand, she is skeptical changes will happen quickly. They are “a day late, a dollar short,” she said.

City officials are also considering a broader overhaul of school bus contracts, many of which have been in place for 46 years, which could help reshape the system. But rebidding the contracts is a complex process that will likely require approval from lawmakers in Albany.

Vendor scorecards could bring more accountability

The new scorecards will include data on crashes, school bus ages, driver staffing levels, breakdowns, and contract violations, such as drivers not logging onto an app that allows families to track the bus location. They will also have a separate safety score based on GPS data.

The scorecards will “actually hold our vendors accountable,” Moran said.

But the list provided by the Education Department does not mention one important metric: how often the buses drop students off at school on time.

NYCSBUS, a nonprofit school bus operator overseen by the city, publishes on-time performance data on its own website, raising questions about why that information won’t be disclosed for all bus companies.

The city already releases some statistics about school bus delays, but they are self-reported by the companies rather than tracked automatically with GPS systems. As a result, official figures may mask the extent of delays, a Gothamist investigation found.

On-time performance figures drawn from GPS data are in the works, officials said. They did not indicate when that would be available.

Carolyn Daly, a spokesperson for several bus companies, said they welcome the scorecards.

“Our contracts require accountability, and accountability is a good thing,” she said.

Sara Catalinotto, the executive director of the advocacy group Parents for Improving School Transportation, believes families will appreciate the data, but she wondered what happens next. Would the city shift more routes to companies that perform better or take action against others at the bottom?

“What are the consequences?” asked Catalinotto.

There are good reasons to wonder how aggressively the Education Department will act based on the scorecards’ information. An audit last year from former Comptroller Brad Lander found the city does not adequately oversee school bus vendors and has failed to collect tens of millions in possible fines when bus drivers did not log into the system that allows families to track their child’s bus.

“The Department of Education has not proactively or systematically used the data that’s available to hold school bus vendors accountable,” said Brooklyn City Council member Lincoln Restler, who recently introduced legislation to require the city to release more information about school bus service. “That needs to change.”

Education Department spokesperson Onika Richards argued the city has always held its bus vendors accountable, including issuing fines for various violations and issuing “corrective action plans” for companies that don’t measure up. That information, Richards indicated, will be included on the scorecard.

After delays, new routing software could finally be coming

The city currently uses two pieces of software to devise routes, one of which launched in 1994 and has not been supported by regular tech upgrades in more than a decade, the comptroller’s office found.

Now, city officials say they are planning to roll out long-delayed routing software from a company called Via Transportation, which has won about $50 million in contracts with the Education Department in recent years to help modernize the bus system’s technology. Officials said the routes should be shorter and more efficient. The comptroller’s report indicated that it should also be able to adapt in real time to traffic conditions.

Still, the city has promised new routing software through Via for years, only to face repeated delays.

Officials first said it would be implemented in 2021 and later rescheduled it for September 2025 citing the pandemic and other setbacks. Last year, the city put out a request for proposals for new vendors to provide the same technology but wound up sticking with Via.

“Since DOE did not hold Via Transportation accountable for implementing technology it was contracted and paid to do, DOE continues to rely on outdated and inefficient routing technology,” the comptroller found.

A spokesperson for the company did not respond to questions.The Education Department did not comment on why the routing software has not yet been implemented.

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

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

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

Private schools, public dollars: A staggering racial gap in NYC special education tuition payments

2026-05-06T21:54:26+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

As Mayor Zohran Mamdani scrambles to plug a multi-billion dollar budget gap, his administration is looking more closely at the money New York City spends on private school tuition for students with disabilities.

The payments — which topped $723 million last school year, up more than 300% from a decade earlier, according to the Independent Budget Office — have long generated intense debate about which families are benefitting. Now, according to data the Education Department previously declined to share, officials have revealed a staggering inequity: The vast majority of students who have access to that money are white.

Families may receive funding for private school tuition after going through a legal process to show their children can’t be adequately served in the public school system. Nearly 71% of students who won tuition payments last school year were white, a population that makes up 12.5% of students with disabilities in the city’s public schools, according to Education Department data that the City Council pushed the agency to disclose last year.

Black and Latino children, who make up about 75% of students with disabilities, represented just 24% of children receiving tuition reimbursements. (About 1 in 5 families did not disclose their race.) The families who benefit from those tuition payments are also much more likely to live in wealthier zip codes, the data confirms.

The statistics may add fuel to the debate about how to make the special education system fairer and rein in growing costs, an issue that has drawn scrutiny in recent months. Many families say the tuition payments are a lifeline, helping them secure specialized instruction they couldn’t otherwise get in the public system. Last school year, the city made tuition payments on behalf of nearly 7,600 students, which cost roughly $100,000 per child on average, city officials said.

Those students have disabilities that range from dyslexia to more complex challenges. About one-third of students who benefit from tuition payments have autism; their tuition costs are about $144,000 a year on average, officials said.

Families of color and those who live in higher-poverty neighborhoods are often shut out of the reimbursement process. Caregivers may not know they are eligible for private placements funded by the city, have legal help to file the necessary claim, or secure outside evaluations to bolster their case for a private school placement.

“The people who have the resources can afford better representation and have better opportunities to engage the legal system,” said Nelson Mar, an attorney at Bronx Legal Services, which handles special education cases for low-income families. “This is what plays out in the legal system in America.”

Private schools often expect families to pay for some tuition costs up front while their legal claim plays out, a strain even on more affluent households. Those are known as “Carter cases” named for a U.S. Supreme Court decision that affirmed the right to those payments.

Low-income families can request that the payments go directly to the private school without the family paying up front, which are known as “Connors cases.” But those opportunities can be limited because “there’s only a few schools that are willing to really take on that type of risk,” Mar said, noting the family may not end up winning their legal case for payments.

In addition to those tuition cases, state law also requires the city to pay for services such as speech therapy and tutoring for students who attend private schools and never considered a public school. Those families aren’t eligible for tuition payments and are excluded from the racial demographic data in this story.

Including the payments for those services, which officials said costs roughly $400 million, the city now pays well over $1 billion a year on tuition and services for students in private schools — roughly $1 in every $40 of the Education Department’s budget.

The city is attempting to tackle the rising cost of services for students in private schools who aren’t seeking tuition payments in part by instituting “fraud controls” to deal with providers who have reportedly billed for services that were unnecessary or weren’t delivered, said Liz Vladeck, the Education Department’s top lawyer. (Many of those services are provided in neighborhoods with large Orthodox Jewish populations where many students attend yeshivas.)

Budget crunch prompts renewed debate about private school payments

The exponentially rising cost of private school special education has attracted attention from City Hall as Mamdani scrambles to fill a projected $5.4 billion gap in the city’s budget.

In a bid to secure more funding from the state to help ease the deficit, city officials have floated private school payments as a potential area for savings, a spokesperson for Gov. Kathy Hochul confirmed.

Vladeck declined to comment on the specifics of those negotiations in an interview with Chalkbeat, but said she is troubled by the racial inequities and growing costs.

“I see it as an urgent problem,” she said, “that’s very challenging for policymakers to get their arms around because it is complicated.”

City officials say they can save money by educating a greater share of students in private placements in the city’s public schools, a promise officials across multiple administrations have made even as tuition costs have continued to grow.

“It used to be a fair critique that special education programs and services in New York City public schools were spotty,” Vladeck said. But she stressed that the city’s compliance with students’ special education learning plans has improved, and the Education Department has incrementally expanded programs for students with disabilities, including those with autism. The city is also overhauling literacy instruction, including for struggling readers.

Vladeck contends the city’s programs can cost dramatically less than what private programs charge and that private schools generally don’t share achievement data, making it difficult to know if they are more effective.

Will the Mamdani administration take action?

It remains to be seen how Mamdani will approach the issue and past mayors have taken radically divergent approaches.

Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg hired an army of lawyers to fight tuition reimbursement requests, which are adjudicated by administrative judges. The goal was to avoid unnecessary placements and plow more money into the public school system as a whole, but the strategy drew criticism from parents and advocates.

His successor, Bill de Blasio, took a less aggressive stance. In response to pressure from lawmakers, he made it easier for parents to seek reimbursement from the city in part by settling cases and not fighting families over the same school placements year after year. He framed the effort as a matter of equity for parents who may not have the resources to repeatedly mount aggressive legal cases.

“That was well intentioned, but it had some pretty damning consequences,” Vladeck said at a City Council hearing in March. In the years that followed, the number of special education complaints seeking payments for tuition, services, and other special education requests grew significantly and costs exploded.

A February report from the conservative-leaning Manhattan Institute argued the reimbursement system is “financially unsustainable” and urged rolling back some of the de Blasio-era reforms, among other changes.

But not everyone is convinced that bringing more students with disabilities into the school system would be less expensive without reducing the level of services students get in private programs.

“I really disagree when people say that this is an unreasonable cost for the DOE to bear,” Mar said of the Education Department spending on private school tuition.

His clients who have private tuition paid by the city have generally made “significant growth.” Mar said a more equitable system would be less adversarial, noting the city often fights cases even when it’s clear the student isn’t receiving the help they need.

Brooklyn mom Dolores Swirin-Yao said she would have preferred to keep her son Jeremy, who has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and learning disabilities including dyslexia, in the public school system. When it became clear his public school wasn’t successfully teaching him to read, she felt she had no choice but to consider a private placement and file a legal claim for reimbursement.

“People say that this is a way for people to game the system and get their kids in private school,” Swirin-Yao said. But her son’s public school “seemed to believe that he would never read.” Without that skill, she worried he would end up on public assistance.

Swirin-Yao hired a lawyer and fronted tuition payments, straining to take on $125,000 in debt while waiting for the Education Department to reimburse her. She recognized she still had a leg up: access to credit, the ability to make phone calls during the work day, or take leave to attend a legal hearing. Though her son is Black, Swirin-Yao felt she benefited from being middle class and white.

Jeremy ultimately learned how to read. He graduated from The Aaron School in 2024.

Despite the stress and strain of paying tuition up front, it was “the best investment I ever made,” Swirin-Yao said. “My child was able to graduate from high school, go to culinary school, can work in this field, and has a future.”

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

State audit slams NYC schools for lack of student data privacy oversight

2026-05-04T20:52:34+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

From student addresses to bus routes, New York City public schools collect and manage large amounts of sensitive personal information on its nearly 900,000 students.

But a new audit released Monday found that the nation’s largest school system “does not have a clear understanding” of the data it collects or the risks it faces. There are major gaps in state-required data security policies and weaknesses in how student information is tracked, secured, and managed, the audit of the city’s student data and privacy operations by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli showed.

The report — which spans from 2020 to 2025, and covers five different chancellors — also cites multiple security breaches of data stored in third-party products used by schools. Upon examining those breaches, auditors found that the Education Department does not maintain a complete inventory of software used across schools.

The findings come at a critical moment for city schools: The Education Department’s recently released framework for AI could potentially open the floodgates to schools using more tech in day-to-day operations from lesson planning to translating materials for bilingual learners.

While auditors did not find a direct violation of the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which would require reporting a breach to the federal government, the state said the gaps in data policy and process could put the district at risk of noncompliance.

“Protecting the privacy and security of student data is of the utmost importance to NYCPS,” Kevin Moran, deputy chancellor of school operations wrote to DiNapoli in response to the audit. “In the past year alone, NYCPS has made several improvements to its privacy practices and policies.”

The city, for instance, has made a new student privacy webpage to inform families of their privacy rights, and it convened a data privacy working group of school leaders, parents, advocates, and industry experts. And while the city accepted most of the comptroller’s recommendations, saying on Monday that it “will continue strengthening policies, oversight, and training to ensure student information is protected across our schools,” it also took issue with some of the state’s findings.

Data breaches show lack of central oversight, auditors say

New York City’s schools system has fallen victim to a few high-profile cyberattacks in recent years, including a security breach that occurred in Illuminate, a platform used for online grading that affected the personal information of about 820,000 current and former students in the 2021-22 school year. In a 2024 data breach of PowerSchool, a school records program, hackers accessed students’ names and dates of birth. The city’s Education Department did not know about the breach until January 2025, according to the audit.

Affecting over 3,000 students and 317 staffers, the PowerSchool incident revealed that the Education Department has no centralized tracking system for what programs each school uses, auditors said. City officials had to reach out to schools individually to find out which had been affected. Education officials ultimately confirmed that four schools had been part of the breach.

In all, the audit identified 141 data security incidents involving breaches of student and staff information from both third-party vendors or internal Education Department systems between January 2023 to February 2025.

“New York City Public Schools does not have a clear understanding of what third party actually has access to the students’ information,” said Tina Kim, head of the comptroller’s state government accountability division. “If there is a breach at one of these different vendors, they don’t know who to notify, or what school to go to.”

The audit also surveyed whether individual New York City public schools use other electronic reporting systems than the two known central ones (Automate The Schools and STARS). Of the 528 schools that responded, 218 said they used at least 70 different applications, “reflecting decentralized and uncoordinated application usage,” according to the report.

Community members calling for a moratorium on AI voiced concerns about schools’ increasing use of third-party tech programs during last week’s contentious Panel for Educational Policy meeting. Many said they’re concerned that the Education Department doesn’t have sufficient oversight of school educational technology products.

The comptroller’s report “confirms what many NYC advocates have long known,” Leonie Haimson, the executive director for Class Size Matters and a long-time advocate for stricter school privacy controls, said in a statement. “The privacy policies and practices of the NYC Dept. of Education are sloppy, irresponsible and show a lack of concern for keeping students’ personal information safe from breach and misuse.”

She criticized the city’s new AI framework, “given how these tools represent an even greater risk to student privacy and safety.”

In response to the audit’s findings, the Education Department agreed to update its data classification policy and create a process for tracking school-level technology program usage.

But school officials took issue with the audit’s claim that the city “lacks centralized oversight,” saying that schools use a centralized process to vet third-party vendors to ensure only approved products are used.

Auditors, however, said approval through the city’s vendor vetting process isn’t the issue. Even with the current vetting process, the Education Department doesn’t know which individual schools are using which systems and whether those systems contain sensitive student data.

Incomplete staff training and reporting delays highlight compliance failures

The audit also found roughly 25% of the Education Department — nearly 43,000 employees — did not complete annual data privacy training. State rules require the training to ensure the protection of student data. Auditors said the district does not have a system to confirm whether untrained employees can still access sensitive data.

Education Department officials said they would explore ways to increase completion rates but argued that tracking only staff with access to sensitive data is administratively complex.

Nearly half of data incidents were reported to the state Education Department later than the 10 days allotted, and families were notified later than the 60 days deadline in about 11% of cases. The city said these delays came from time-consuming third-party investigations but vowed to improve timeliness. The state comptroller called the delays “unacceptable” and said the Education Department rejected suggested changes to its internal audit process.

Panel for Educational Policy member Naveed Hasan said the findings in the comptroller’s report were “not at all surprising” and that the city lacks staffing and resources to address data privacy issues.

“My ongoing policy recommendation is to reconsider the outsourcing of what should be in-house technology implementation by NYC,” said Hasan, who supports a two-year moratorium on AI use. “We should be building and maintaining infrastructure to better address data security and privacy before they become breaches.”

The state comptroller’s office said they will conduct a follow-up audit of the city’s progress after one year.

Correction: May 5, 2026: This story initially stated that NYC schools collect and manage students’ Social Security numbers. Schools do not collect or manage those numbers.

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.

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

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

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.

What is your child learning at school? NYC launches new tool to track literacy lessons

2026-04-27T20:34:39+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Is your child learning about animal behavior, how the 19th Amendment was ratified, or Japanese internment during World War II?

A new tool quietly launched by New York City’s Education Department gives families and the broader public a window into the topics students are learning about in English language arts classes at any given time. It also serves up free digital books connected to the specific unit students are learning about.

The platform, known as the NYC Reads Curriculum Finder, includes a trove of information about what elementary school and some middle school students are learning in English classes down to the school and grade level. It displays questions students are learning about — “what does it take to make a successful invention?” in one third grade unit — as well as the types of materials students are using, such as biographies, films, poems, and opinion pieces.

The curriculum finder is part of a broader push to ensure students are building on their literacy skills outside of school. Officials hope the database will give caregivers, educators, and after-school providers an easy way to boost students’ vocabulary and background knowledge, which research suggests is an important element of reading comprehension.

“We need to democratize this information about what curriculum a school is using and what a student is learning,” said Jennifer Ramos, an official at the Center for Public Research and Leadership at Columbia Law School, the organization that took the lead in creating the tool in partnership with the Education Department. “Everyone can look it up and say, ‘Okay, kindergartners in this district are learning about trees.’”

The tool is tied to the city’s reading curriculum mandate that requires all elementary schools, and eventually all middle schools, to use city-approved reading programs. Educators are expected to follow pacing guides, making it possible to track what topics students are learning about at precise times throughout the year. Schools were previously allowed to pick their own curriculums and hundreds of schools used a program that was discredited by reading experts.

The curriculum finder — which was developed in partnership with the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development and the nonprofit organization ExpandED Schools — is still a work in progress. Many elementary schools appear to have no curriculum information listed, the tool’s search functions do not always work seamlessly or display correct information, and it was out of commission in recent days as officials worked to make updates.

An Education Department spokesperson said the tool is in an “improvement phase” and officials are “improving completeness and accuracy of school listings.” Users can also submit reports of missing information or other feedback directly on the site.

An early target for the tool is after-school providers and community organizations, who have long struggled to sync their programming to what students are learning during the school day in part because reading curriculums were historically not consistent between schools or even from classroom to classroom.

Ashley Jones, who helps supervise free after-school programs operated by the Coalition for Hispanic Family Services, said staffers have sometimes relied on informal hallway conversations with teachers or gleaning clues from students’ homework to get a sense of what’s going on in classrooms.

“Schools are busy — we’re all busy,” Jones said. It can be difficult to find time to coordinate with students’ classroom teachers and the curriculum finder tool could help bridge that gap, she added.

Despite some glitches, Jones said the organization has started to experiment with the tool and is thinking about how to encourage her staff to incorporate it as they plan for next school year. She hopes the next step is more training for after-school staff to support student literacy, even as her program’s goal is not to simply extend the school day.

Other providers have yet to hear about the tool.

Emily Kirven, who runs Read 718, a Brooklyn-based organization that provides tutoring to hundreds of struggling readers, said she is “excited to play around with it.”

To access books that are connected to what students are learning in class, families must log in with their Education Department accounts, which could create a barrier for her staff accessing the materials, Kirven said. But she noted that it would still be useful to know what topics students are learning about because the organization likely has books on hand that tie in to the relevant topic.

“It just would be helpful knowing what they’re doing in different grades of different schools so that we can continue to better align our instruction.”

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

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

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

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

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.

NYC public school suspensions dropped 8% in the first half of the school year

2026-04-08T12:00:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Suspensions across New York City’s public schools plunged in the first half of this school year, according to new city data released this month.

From July to December 2025, schools handed out nearly 9,200 suspensions, 8% fewer than the same period in 2024. The decline included a nearly 22% drop in long-term superintendent suspensions, which run six days or more and are served at outside suspension sites.

Principal suspensions, which last five days or fewer and are typically completed in school, fell about 5% to nearly 7,600.

Suspensions were already on the decline in the runup to the pandemic and cratered when school buildings shut down. They came roaring back after school buildings reopened, and educators raised fears that student behavior was deteriorating.

But the punishments have since steadily declined over the past two school years, falling below pre-pandemic levels. Schools handed out 27% fewer suspensions in the first half of this school year compared with the same period the year before the pandemic forced buildings to shutter. Enrollment in the city’s K-12 schools has declined about 15% over that period (the data do not include charter schools).

It’s unclear what is driving the significant drop in suspensions even as concerns about student mental health grew in the wake of the pandemic. There have not been any major changes to school discipline policies in recent years under former Mayor Eric Adams, though lengthy suspensions have drawn scrutiny. A Chalkbeat investigation found schools have routinely suspended students with disabilities for longer than legally allowed.

The decline could reflect changes in student behavior and broader social trends. (Violent crimes, including murders, shootings, and robberies, have dropped sharply.) Chronic absenteeism remains elevated, meaning students are in school fewer days on average.

Advocates who represent families in suspension proceedings contend that investments in mental health support and restorative justice, which can include peer mediation and other approaches to resolving conflict, are bearing fruit.

“The efforts to introduce alternatives to suspensions and to use restorative practices to help lift the social-emotional well being in schools — that is taking greater root,” said Nelson Mar, an attorney at Bronx Legal Services. Still, he said “it’s really hard to say” whether there has been more subtle pressure on principals to reduce suspensions. (Multiple school leaders said they were unaware of any new districtwide efforts to clamp down on suspensions.)

Some observers feared that a new ban on cellphones in schools, which took effect last fall, could lead to a spike in disciplinary incidents. It does not appear to have caused an uptick in suspensions, at least for now.

Chyann Tull, an Education Department spokesperson echoed that the decline in suspensions reflect that “schools are increasingly using restorative practices, peer mediation, in-school counseling, and referrals to external mental health providers to respond to student needs, helping keep students engaged in their learning while maintaining safe school communities.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani did not include funding for some of those initiatives in his preliminary budget. He did not extend $6 million in city funding for restorative justice programs. And his budget does not include $5 million to provide access to mental health clinics and other support at 50 high-need schools in the Bronx and Brooklyn, an initiative known as the Mental Health Continuum. In prior years, advocates and local lawmakers have pushed for those programs to be restored in the final city budget that is due by July 1.

Advocates are watching closely, as Mamdani has said little about how his administration intends to approach school discipline policy.

Under Adams, “they had not emphasized these programs but didn’t go out of their way to cut them,” said Mar. “It may be the same song and dance.”

Advocates have also long raised concerns about stark disparities in suspension rates; Black students and those with disabilities remain disproportionately removed from their classrooms even as suspensions have dropped. The mid-year suspension data does not include demographic breakdowns; those statistics should be available when full-year suspension statistics are published in October.

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

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

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.

Amid ‘massive shortfall’ of school safety officers, NYPD deploys assistant agents as young as 18

2026-03-26T18:53:41+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Walk into a New York City public school, and you may be greeted by a police official who is not old enough to buy cigarettes or order a drink.

The Police Department has deployed 114 assistant school safety agents as young as 18 and fresh out of high school to patrol the city’s elementary schools, city officials confirmed this week.

The assistant agents are responsible for answering phones, operating recently installed video intercoms, greeting visitors, and helping identify people “violating New York City Public Schools rules and regulations,” according to the job description. The position pays $37,339 a year, about $2,000 more than minimum wage.

First announced in 2023, the program was slow to get off the ground. It has also faced sharp criticism from dozens of education advocates who oppose police presence in schools who tried to convince former Mayor Eric Adams to drop the program.

City officials hope the assistant agents will help replenish the ranks of school safety officers, who wear police uniforms but are unarmed. Including the new crop of assistant school safety agents, there are nearly 3,600 police officials stationed in the city’s schools, down about 28% over the last six years from 5,000. The decline has been fueled by attrition during the pandemic connected to the COVID vaccine mandate, low wages, and moves by Adams not to restaff the division.

School leaders have raised alarms that the drop in school safety agents has compromised safety. It’s also caused delays getting to class since the agents are responsible for operating metal detectors on campuses that require students to be screened before entering the building.

“We are experiencing a massive shortfall,” Mark Rampersant, the education department’s safety chief, said at a City Council hearing this week.

Kevyn Bowles, the principal of New Bridges Elementary School in Brooklyn, initially feared that an assistant safety agent might not have the emotional maturity to respond to conflict or high-stress situations. But after his school was assigned one, he changed his mind.

“Schools are stretched, so any extra help is beneficial and appreciated,” Bowles said.

The assistant agent largely supervises the front desk and buzzes people in, freeing up the other agent to respond to behavioral crises or safety issues. In the past, a school staff member would have to cover the front desk if the school’s sole safety agent was responding to an incident or on a lunch break.

“She’s very calm, professional, respectful — maybe I shouldn’t have doubted the 19-year-olds of the world,” Bowles added.

Still, a range of education advocates and civil rights groups have raised concerns about the new role and argue the city should focus more on staffing up mental health support and using alternative approaches to conflict resolution.

Johanna Miller, director of the education policy center at the New York Civil Liberties Union, emphasized that the assistant agents receive about eight weeks of training, which is less than half of what regular agents receive.

“We’re concerned about poorly trained NYPD officers in elementary schools,” Miller said. “There are a lot of people who could be qualified to watch a door without having a direct line to the NYPD and the potential for children to be arrested.”

A police department spokesperson did not respond to questions about the assistant agents’ training.

Officials noted major crimes in schools have fallen 9% so far this school year compared with last year, and school arrests are down about 10%. As part of a reorganization of the school safety division, staff who previously held administrative positions were deployed to schools.

It remains to be seen whether the assistant agents will make a dent in the city’s efforts to restaff the school safety division. The 114 assistant agents assigned to schools are far below the 400 agents the Police Department was originally approved to hire. (Officials did not respond to a question about what the current target is.)

Rampersant, the Education Department’s safety chief, said officials are visiting high schools and parent association meetings to advertise the program to get more recruits. But he said low wages remain a sticking point for all school safety agent roles and starting salaries for other law enforcement agencies are significantly higher.

“When you are a school safety agent — you rather work in a correctional facility than a school, right? — that’s really telling,” Rampersant said.

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

NYC releases guidelines for AI in schools. Some say it raises more questions than it answers.

2026-03-24T22:09:12+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

New York City’s Education Department unveiled its preliminary guidelines for artificial intelligence use, offering a rough road map for if and when to incorporate AI tools in school.

The guidance, released Tuesday, arrives nearly three years after a short-lived school ban on ChatGPT. It also comes in the midst of ongoing debates about student privacy, AI’s effect on student learning and development, and the role of private companies in schools. Some schools had designed their own policies as they awaited citywide guidance.

Hot button issues, like how and if students can use AI for homework assignments, or whether students can use personal AI chatbot accounts in addition to tools approved and supervised by the Education Department, are still being hashed out.

City officials are asking families and educators for feedback, which will inform future versions of the guidance. The Education Department released a short survey and will also host webinars and events to answer questions and gather feedback through May 8.

“AI is here, and our responsibility is to put strong systemwide safeguards in place,” schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels wrote in an email to parents.

The early framework is structured in a “traffic light” approach: green light for approved uses, red light for prohibited cases, and yellow light cases for gray areas, which require significant oversight.

For example, brainstorming lesson plans and drafting non-critical communications fall under “green light” cases.

In “yellow light” cases, schools can use AI to find trends in student data, to generate translations for bilingual learners, or adapt materials for students with disabilities — but a trained professional must first review the outputs before it is used with students.

All decisions made about students, including grading, development of special education and 504 plans, discipline, counseling and crisis intervention, and other academic placement decisions, are strictly forbidden. These “red light” cases are not expected to change in the final playbook the city aims to release in June.

Pushback has already been fierce among parents and education advocacy groups: A petition asking the city to put a two-year pause on AI use in schools has garnered about 1,500 signatures since October. Several Community Education Councils have also passed resolutions calling for a moratorium of AI in schools.

The guidance was written by the Education Department’s AI Task Force, and informed by the city’s external AI Advisory Council, which includes education technology partners from Google, OpenAI, and other companies hoping to contract with the city’s roughly 800,000 K- 12 students.

Questions remain about student privacy and third-party AI contracts

Before schools can use AI tools in the classroom, each product must go through a data privacy and security vetting process called the Enterprise Request Management Application. The process, created in 2023, applies to all third-party technology vendors.

But AI has become ubiquitous. The Education Department’s contract with Microsoft 365 programs did not originally include AI chatbots, but now do, said Naveed Hasan, a member of the Education Department’s Data Privacy Working Group.

“Just like TikTok was unregulated until school networks blocked it, so are these free AI products,” said Hasan, whose group advised on data privacy policies prior to the AI guidance.

Schools can visit the department’s Ed Tech portal to see if a tool has already been approved; otherwise, schools must submit an application for new use.

The process, however, doesn’t yet include guidelines on how to review certain aspects of AI products, such as algorithmic bias or instructional effectiveness. Those are expected to be included in the final June version of the playbook.

The guidelines, which were shaped by federal and local laws, say personal student information can never be entered into unapproved AI tools, and under no circumstances can student information be used to make money or train AI models.

Although the general sentiment about privacy protection is clear, how to ensure it remains protected in every use is a key question that some close to the policy development say remains unfinished.

Hasan said the guidance alone can’t guarantee privacy and relying on third-party products, even approved ones, makes it difficult to know what’s secure and what’s not.

He has called on the Education Department to consider maintaining its own hardware and training its own group of AI experts instead of relying on outside companies.

AI moratorium advocates push back

The Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, one of the groups on the AI moratorium committee, said in a response Tuesday that the guidance does not address the potential long-term effects of AI use on learning and thinking.

The city has already accepted that AI will be a part of school learning before proving its value and safety for students, said Kelly Clancy, founder of Parents for AI Caution, another group on the committee.

“The city needs to have a burden of proof about why this is good,” Clancy said. “It shouldn’t just be about harm reduction, but rather why AI is better for my kids than a human-centered, traditional classroom.”

Education Department officials said proposals for new, AI-focused schools and programs — like Next Generation Technology, an “AI-focused” high school pending approval — must demonstrate how they align with the guidance’s principles.

The full preliminary guidance can be accessed here.

Correction: March 24, 2026: This story initially said that private student data could not be entered into approved or unapproved AI tools under the guidance. The only prohibition is for unapproved tools. And the Education Department’s Data Privacy Working Group advised on previous student data privacy policies, but not the AI guidance language.

March 25, 2026: This story originally said that free tools did not have to go through the vetting process. City officials said the policy includes vetting free tools.

Manhattan proposal for NYC’s first AI-focused public high school sparks pushback

2026-03-13T00:33:22+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

New York City students with a passion for STEM — and an interest in artificial intelligence — may soon have a high school dedicated to training “the next generation of technology professionals.”

But families in Manhattan’s District 2 are pushing back against the proposal for Next Generation Technology High School, a new screened admissions high school that would take the place of the tiny, girls-only Urban Assembly School of Business for Young Women. Next Generation would be the first city public school to focus its curriculum on AI and computer science.

As details of the two proposals emerged over the last month, so have dual tensions: What should fill the space left by Young Women in Business, and how private technology companies and their artificial intelligence products could shape the curriculum at Next Generation.

Much of the opposition to Next Generation has come from families at a middle school also in the Broadway building, Lower Manhattan Community School. Also known as LMC, parents at the school have called on the department for years to expand enrollment from grades 6-8 up to grade 12.

The Panel for Educational Policy, the board that votes on new schools and closures, is expected to consider the proposals for Next Generation and Business for Young Women at its April 29 meeting.

The Education Department released both proposals on March 6, the day after the city’s eighth graders received their high school acceptance offers. If approved, Next Generation would welcome its first class of ninth graders in the fall. (The plan to close Business for Young Women in June is not contingent on Next Generation’s approval.)

Despite not having the green light yet, Next Generation has already held three virtual open houses. Its online interest form states the school is “set to open” in fall 2026, noting that applications would open March 19.

Parents ask: ‘Why this school and why here?’

Manhattan High Schools Superintendent Gary Beidleman introduced the idea for Next Generation Technology High School at a Feb. 25 meeting of the District 2 Community Education Council.

Panel for Educational Policy members and families of the three co-located schools at 26 Broadway — in addition to LMC and Business for Young Women, Richard R. Green High School of Teaching shares the building — said that meeting was the first time the district school community had been notified of the proposed STEM- and technology-focused screened high school.

At the Feb. 25 announcement, Beidleman said Next Generation grew out of his experience as a summer 2024 Google Education Innovation Fellow, and that Google and OpenAI are part of the planning team for the school. One of the school’s goals, he said, is to “expand pathways connected to high-growth technology careers” and provide advanced STEM and technology programming for NYC students. Next Generation also plans to offer a summer internship program with Carnegie Mellon University.

Caleb Haraguchi-Combs, founding principal and project director of Next Generation High School, said in an information session that the school would utilize Google’s new, AI-powered Skills Platform. How much of this AI-powered, AI-focused Google coursework would comprise the curriculum is still in flux, according to the proposal’s educational impact statement.

The school’s academic description includes similar or identical language as found on the Google Skills website: Next Generation’s “special access to technology industry mentors,” “technology certifications,” and “curriculum that adapts to the dynamic changes in the technology field” are offerings advertised on the homepage of the Google Skills site.

Officials and families question new school proposal process

The community and Panel for Educational Policy members have asked questions about the fast proposal process, speaking to uncertainty around admissions for the coming school year.

Parents said in a letter to the Panel for Educational Policy that the proposal seemingly came out of nowhere, and families were not provided adequate engagement opportunities before its release. Panel Chair Greg Faulkner said he has received hundreds of similar letters from parents since the community learned of the incoming proposal in late February.

High school offers were released March 5, ahead of the panel’s vote and months before the proposed school would open. It remains unclear how the Education Department would handle screening requirements — such as interviews or assessments — after the main admissions cycle has concluded. The Office of District Planning did not respond to questions about how enrollment would work for this fall.

A petition in support of the school, created by the Next Generation’s founding principal and program director on March 8, had under 100 signatures at the time of publishing.

A public hearing is scheduled for April 14, two weeks before the panel’s vote.

“I would love more transparency around why the department chooses certain schools to go in certain places,” said Sarah Calderon, a parent at Lower Manhattan Community School. “When we asked the superintendent, ‘Why this school and why here?’ he said he had no data on district demand.”

Beidelman told parents at the Feb. 25 District 2 meeting that expanding Lower Manhattan Community “was not an idea that was on the table.”

The Education Department receives many proposals each year, including some from outside New York City, said Sean Rux of the Office of New School Development.

“This was the proposal that spoke to us,” Rux said.

Families push to expand Lower Manhattan Community School

The plan to close the underenrolled Business for Young Women school has been percolating for a few years — with just 91 students this year, it’s the smallest district high school in the city, said Education Department officials.

Families at Lower Manhattan Community School say they have pushed for years to expand into a 6–12 model, and would like to move into the space used by Business for Young Women, if closed.

“A proposal to expand LMC could potentially open up sixth grade admissions to applicants citywide, but we have not been given the opportunity to even submit a proposal,” said Anne Hager, a parent of a sixth grader at Lower Manhattan School.

At a PTA meeting with Education Department staff on Wednesday, LMC’s Student Leadership Team presented its case to expand the school instead of opening Next Generation.

A new 6-12 would eliminate the need for LMC students to go through a second, onerous application process, something that students with disabilities would especially benefit from, they said. The presentation also cited Department of Education data from 2024 that showed 6-12 schools have nearly three times higher demand than their 6-8 middle school counterparts.

District 2 has a higher proportion of screened and specialized high schools compared with citywide averages.

The department’s proposal focuses largely on space at the Broadway campus, estimating that Next Generation would serve roughly 450 students by its fourth year. All three schools can comfortably co-locate, according to the proposal, though its capacity calculations do not allot for significant expansion for either Richard R. Green High School or LMC.

Debate over AI timing and oversight

Next Generation’s proposal arrives amid broader debate over artificial intelligence in schools.

The school initially marketed itself in information sessions and on social media as an “AI school,” though DOE officials later clarified that students would learn about artificial intelligence rather than be taught by it.

“Students need to be creators, not consumers, of technology,” Beidleman said at the Feb. 25 meeting. “Lessons learned from the past show us that new tech in place creates an opportunity.”

Some parents have argued that broad use of an AI platform in public schools should not be allowed before comprehensive guidelines have been released by the city.

Greg Faulkner, who chairs the Panel for Educational Policy, said he first learned of the proposal after receiving Next Generation’s interest form last month. Since then, the panel has received hundreds of letters from parents opposing the plan and raising concerns about the lack of community engagement so far.

“I have two major hesitations with this: We don’t know what kind of AI involvement there will be. The development team has not provided a playbook for how that will look,” Faulkner said. “And in reading the response letters from District 2 parents, I see that proper engagement and process was not done.”

At a District 2 town hall on March 5, Chancellor Kamar Samuels said the Education Department expects to release AI guidance in the coming weeks and will provide a 45-day window for community feedback once it’s published.

Five Community Education Councils have passed resolutions calling for a two-year moratorium on artificial intelligence use in schools. But calls for broad AI guidelines implemented at the city level are nothing new; a proposed expansion of an AI-powered reading program was halted in 2024 after former Comptroller Brad Lander called for a citywide playbook.

“I think the question of teacher capacity and teacher shortages, the research on kids and AI, is still nascent, and the DOE’s lack of its own AI policy leads me to question the timing of any AI school,” said Calderon, the parent at Lower Manhattan Community.

Could NYC get a 2-year extension to meet class size caps? A key architect of the law is open to it.

2026-03-11T12:00:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

A key architect of a state law that mandates smaller class sizes in New York City indicated he’s open to giving Mayor Zohran Mamdani more time to comply.

State Sen. John Liu, a sponsor of the class size law, said it would be reasonable to extend the timeline from two years to four years before the nation’s largest school system is expected to fully meet the class size caps.

“Mayor Mamdani has been very clear he wants to reduce class sizes in accordance with the mandate,” Liu said. But “both he and the chancellor have suggested that more time and more money may be needed.”

Under the state’s 2022 law, 80% of city classrooms must include no more than 20-25 students, depending on the grade level, by next school year. All classrooms must fall under those caps by the 2027-28 school year. (The teachers union contract allows class sizes up to 34 students in high school classrooms.)

“It would not be unreasonable for the city to commit to a 70%, 80%, 90%, and then 100% timetable,” said Liu, referring to the percentage of classes that would have to comply with the new class size caps in each of the next four school years.

Liu’s comments signal that state lawmakers and city officials may try to tuck tweaks to the class size law into the state budget, which often includes various policy changes and is due April 1. But any alterations are likely to be contentious since the class size policy was a major priority of the city teachers union, which carries significant political clout in Albany.

In a statement on Tuesday, Liu demanded a “clear plan” to shrink class sizes to comply with state law before lawmakers will agree to extend Mamdani’s control over the school system, which expires at the end of June.

The initial state law did not come with dedicated funding to hire thousands of new teachers required to staff smaller classes, which has been a major sticking point with city officials. In a budget proposal released Monday, lawmakers in the state assembly included $600 million to help New York City reduce class sizes. For his part, Mamdani has proposed an extra $543 million in city dollars next year to comply with the mandate.

A rep for City Hall did not respond to questions about whether the mayor supports the timeline Liu outlined. Mamdani voted for the legislation when he was a state lawmaker.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said the union does not support extending the deadline without a road map from the city to ramp up school construction to create more space for smaller classes.

“Only when a real plan and a clear timeline are in place — not the usual School Construction smoke and mirrors — would we have the information necessary to consider whether any amendments are needed,” Mulgrew said in a statement.

Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels has previously said he would rather the city more efficiently use existing space, including by merging schools, before investing in new buildings.

City officials have already struggled to meet the mandate’s requirements. This school year, 60% of New York City schools were supposed to meet the new caps — a benchmark that officials met after exempting more than 10,000 classrooms from the class size caps.

Some proponents of reducing class sizes said the city has failed to adequately plan to implement the law and should not be given more time or money without a more detailed proposal.

“I would oppose any additional funding unless the DOE provides an actual, detailed multiyear plan to show how this funding will be used to provide the space and staffing to lower class size and achieve the caps in the law,” said Leonie Haimson, the executive director of Class Size Matters, an advocacy group. “Similarly, I wouldn’t support any extension of the deadlines unless the DOE provides this sort of plan.”

Critics of the law, including State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa, have raised concerns that higher-need schools stand to benefit the least from the new class size caps because those campuses already tend to have smaller classes.

Representatives for Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins did not reply to questions about whether they support changes to the class size law.

Gov. Kathy Hochul also did not indicate whether she supports any tweaks.

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

NYC 2025 graduation rate dips, fueled by declines among students with disabilities and English learners

2026-03-09T19:58:25+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Graduation rates dipped last year across New York City by just over 2 percentage points to 81.2% — the largest year-over-year decline in more than two decades — as officials have reinstated requirements that were loosened during the pandemic.

Meanwhile, the graduation rate across the state fell by just under 1 percentage point to 85.5%.

The drops in students graduating on time were most pronounced for some of the city’s most vulnerable children. Just 59% of students with disabilities graduated in four years, a drop of 5.5 percentage points. Nearly 52% of English language learners graduated in four years, down by about 3 percentage points.

The data, which state officials posted quietly online without the customary public announcement or press briefing, reveals the graduation rates for the Class of 2025. Those students began ninth grade in September 2021, the first time all students were required to attend school in person after the pandemic hit.

“They entered high school in a weird place,” said Sarah Part, a senior policy analyst at Advocates for Children, a group that provides support and legal help to low-income families. “It is possible that some students started ninth grade not as prepared as they otherwise would have been.”

Still, the city and state’s overall graduation rate remains higher than before the pandemic, when about 77% of city students graduated in four years and 83% of students statewide did.

City officials contend that last year’s dip was largely driven by resuming graduation standards that had been relaxed during the pandemic to account for disruptions to instruction. Some students received waivers from Regents exams or were allowed to appeal low scores.

Nearly 14% of city students relied on a Regents exam waiver to graduate in the Class of 2025, down from a whopping 53% in the Class of 2024, city officials said. (Nearly 53% of students successfully appealed low scores, a similar number as the year before.)

It is difficult to determine to what extent the graduation policy changes have affected the graduation rate because some students may have still graduated even without the more lenient standards.

Aaron Pallas, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College who has studied school performance, said it is possible the policy shifts are having a meaningful effect but it’s important to look at longer-term trends. “My perennial claim is don’t make too much of a one-year change,” he said.

Pallas said other factors could be playing a role. Rates of chronic absenteeism remain elevated, for instance, likely affecting students’ academic performance.

Grad rates drop significantly for students with disabilities and English learners

Andrew Wilder, an English as a second language teacher at Brooklyn’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School, said he was unsurprised that graduation rates for English learners dropped after soaring during the pandemic.

“The fact that students did not have to pass the English Regents — that led to a pretty substantial bump in the graduation rate,” he said. “It’s an English language test more than it is a test of a student’s high school ability.”

Even accounting for this year’s decline, however, graduation rates for that group are up about 11 percentage points since the pandemic hit.

Yet, dropout rates for English learners spiked to 18%, up 4 percentage points, city data show.

The city’s overall dropout rate increased slightly to 5.2%.

One group that bucked the trend: The dropout rate for students with disabilities fell slightly, to 6.7%. That could suggest some students who remain in school but didn’t graduate on time will still eventually earn a diploma.

“It’s possible students are just needing a little bit more time in high school,” said Part, from Advocates for Children.

The data reveal continued disparities in graduation rates between different racial groups. Nearly 92% of Asian American students graduated on time along with 87% of white students. About 77% of Black and Latino students graduated in four years. (Every racial group saw a decline.)

Education Department spokesperson Isla Gething wrote in a statement that the city remains “committed to high-quality instruction and strengthening targeted supports so that every student, especially students with disabilities and English language learners, has equitable access to rigorous instruction and clear pathways to graduation.”

Phasing out Regents offers opportunity to rethink graduation standards

The graduation rate fluctuations during and after the pandemic could hold important lessons for policymakers as they rethink what it should take to earn a diploma.

State officials are in the process of phasing out Regents exams — which have been in place since the mid-1800s — as a graduation requirement. Instead, New York students will need to meet a broader set of criteria demonstrating critical thinking, communication, and other skills known as the “portrait of a graduate.” State officials, however, have not unveiled the specific graduation standards students will be required to meet in the coming years.

Arlen Benjamin-Gomez, the executive director of EdTrust-New York, said the fluctuations for students with disabilities and English learners should prompt a broader conversation about how state officials can set appropriate standards for different groups.

It’s a “real opportunity to think about these two subgroups particularly, because this data really shows us how much they’re impacted by whatever the graduation measures are,” she said. “Having a disability shouldn’t be a reason that you are not able to graduate from high school.”

Still, she noted that officials must be careful to ensure that graduation standards remain rigorous and signify that students are ready for life after high school, including college or the workforce.

Wilder, the English as a second language teacher, was eager for more details and looks forward to spending less time teaching to the Regents exam. The test, he said, is often too far above his students’ level of English proficiency to be a useful measure of their learning.

“They come to believe that their inability to pass the English Regents is somehow a function of them as a student,” he said.

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

Kamar Samuels’ cabinet: Your guide to the Education Department’s new leadership team

2026-03-05T19:54:48+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

New York City schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels announced his top deputies Thursday, replacing some of the system’s top leaders while keeping several others.

Of his 11 cabinet members, all have deep roots in the nation’s largest school system — and six are staying in the roles they assumed under the previous administration.

Samuels named Danielle Giunta as first deputy. She will helm his cabinet and oversee a slew of key areas, ranging from academics to district leadership, including managing two newly created roles of supervising superintendents. One will supervise elementary and middle school superintendents and another will oversee high schools and alternative program superintendents.

“I spent two decades of my career in roles across NYC public schools — from math teacher to principal to superintendent — and I’ve seen many iterations of our organizational chart, iterations that often lacked cohesion, efficiency, and clarity,” Samuels told a packed audience at the Education Department’s Lower Manhattan headquarters. “I needed to make some structural changes.”

The changes Samuels announced on Thursday do not completely overhaul the system’s leadership. Simone Hawkins, the deputy chancellor of early childhood education, will keep her position — a key post as Mayor Zohran Mamdani prioritizes universal child care and shoring up the prekindergarten system. Kenita Lloyd will stay in her role as chief of staff, which she held under former chancellors Melissa Aviles-Ramos and David Banks. She previously worked with Banks to support the Eagle Academy network of public schools, which he helped launch.

Lloyd compared herself to a professional basketball player changing teams.

“The coaching philosophy shifts, culture evolves, and expectations have risen, yet the responsibility remains the same,” she said. “Elevate performance, protect the star, and help the team win.”

It remains to be seen whether Samuels will make other structural changes.

Former Chancellor Richard Carranza added a new layer of executive superintendents. Banks scrapped those positions and required all of the city’s local superintendents to reapply for their jobs.

Here are the new faces in Samuels’ cabinet.

First Deputy Chancellor: Danielle Giunta

As first deputy, Giunta will oversee district planning, enrollment, new school development, and policy as well as academics and instruction, with the two supervising superintendents, one for elementary and middle school, and the other for high school and alternative programs, reporting directly to her.

Giunta most recently served as the chief of school leadership development, tapped by Banks to fill that new role. Prior to that she spent about a decade as the superintendent of District 26, a high-performing and affluent part of Queens that includes Bayside, Douglaston, and Little Neck. She was a principal at P.S. 154 in Flushing.

Supervising Superintendent of Elementary and Middle Schools: Maribel Torres-Hulla

Supervising Superintendent of High Schools and D79: Alan Cheng

In these newly created roles, Torres-Hulla and Cheng will oversee the implementation of the city’s curriculum mandates, NYC Reads for literacy and NYC Solves for math. They will oversee work around career readiness and apprenticeship programs. And as the state is changing graduation requirements, the high school supervising superintendent will have a massive job helping schools figure out how to shift their practices.

Torres-Hulla, born in the Bronx and raised in Brooklyn, rose through the ranks from elementary school teacher to literacy coach, assistant principal, principal, deputy superintendent, and superintendent of the Bronx’s District 10. Most recently, she served as chief of school support, working with superintendents of 18 local school districts across Brooklyn and the Bronx to help them align instruction with citywide initiatives.

Cheng’s career has had a similar trajectory, starting as a math teacher and working his way up as a principal, deputy superintendent, and superintendent. He most recently has served as the superintendent for Outward Bound schools and international schools — serving newcomer immigrants — as well as New York Performance Standards Consortium schools, which require students to do performance-based assessments, such as capstone projects or other presentations rather than Regents exit exams. Consortium schools could potentially serve as a model as the state overhauls graduation requirements.

Former Deputy Chancellor for School Leadership Danika Rux previously oversaw all superintendents; she will no longer have a cabinet position and will advise the office of the general counsel. Samuels, who previously served two tours as local superintendent in Manhattan and Brooklyn, said the new roles are meant to help support superintendents as they navigate reading and math curriculum overhauls and implement a new set of graduation standards in the coming years.

Deputy Chancellor of the Division of Family Partnership & Community Support: Flavia Puello-Perdomo

Attendance, students in temporary housing and foster care, language access, school wellness and counseling programs, and community schools providing wraparound support will be among the areas that Puello-Perdomo will oversee. She will also be in charge of Family and Community Empowerment, or FACE, the office that supports parent leaders on parent-teacher associations, school leadership teams, and Community Education Councils — along with running the elections for these councils, which have been plagued by low turnout.

Puello-Perdomo most recently served as the chief of schools for the office of community supports and wellness where she worked across agencies to support community school programs, students in temporary housing and foster care, after-school, and summer programs. She also focused on attendance initiatives.

Deputy Chancellor of the Division of Finance, Administration, & Human Resources: Michael Cheatham will serve as acting deputy chancellor until June, when Lindsey Oates takes over

This role will be responsible for administrative services, finance, human resources, and procurement.

Cheatham previously served as a senior advisor to the chancellor and chief financial officer and as senior executive director and acting chief of finance and human resources for the Division of School Leadership. He’s currently also the Education Department’s interim chief savings officer, a role Mamdani established to find cost-efficiency strategies.

Oates previously served as the Education Department’s chief financial officer during the de Blasio administration. She’s currently the interim chief financial officer at the Legal Aid Society.

Here’s who is returning to their former post.

Chief of Staff Kenita Lloyd. Lloyd joined the Education Department as a deputy chancellor of family engagement under Banks. She was elevated to the chief of staff role in 2024, and Samuels is keeping her in that role.

Deputy Chancellor of the Division of Inclusive and Accessible Learning Christina Foti. The division oversees special education, multilingual learners, and District 75, a network of schools that serve students with more significant disabilities.

Deputy Chancellor of the Division of Early Childhood Education Simone Hawkins

Deputy Chancellor of the Division of School Operations Kevin Moran

Chief of Safety and Prevention Partnerships Mark Rampersant

Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel Liz Vladeck

Correction, March 5, 2026: Alan Cheng most recently oversaw Outward Bound schools, the Internationals School Network, and consortium schools.

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.

Former Chancellor Aviles-Ramos takes job at firm with ties to NYC schools: ‘It should raise eyebrows’

2026-03-03T20:52:53+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Former New York City schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos has accepted a senior role at HMH, a major education company at the center of the city’s reading curriculum overhaul.

Aviles-Ramos started at the company on Monday as a senior advisor with the title “executive in residence for innovation and analytics,” company officials said.

“In my new role at HMH, I will spend time engaging with leaders in large districts across the country, listening to their experiences and learning from their challenges to inform how HMH supports districts at scale,” Aviles-Ramos wrote in a statement. “My role will be advisory, forward-looking, and focused on developing insights on best practices for impact and implementation.” Her new job was first reported by the Daily News.

The former schools chief’s decision to work for a firm with millions of dollars in business with the city’s public school system swiftly drew strong reactions from parents, teachers, and experts.

“They’re a provider for one of the most widely used reading curricula in the City of New York,” said Jonathan Collins, a professor of political science and education at Columbia University Teachers College. “At the very least, I think it should raise eyebrows.”

HMH, formerly known as Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, gained traction in New York City under former Mayor Eric Adams’ signature initiative to standardize elementary school reading curriculums. Although city officials approved three reading programs, HMH is required in 22 of the city’s 32 local districts — owing in part to a savvy marketing strategy that allowed schools to use some materials at no charge during the pandemic, giving the company a strong foothold.

Aviles-Ramos was not chancellor when that program launched, but she became responsible for supervising the effort when she took the helm in October 2024. The school’s chief hoped to stay on the job, but was passed over by Mayor Zohran Mamdani in favor of Kamar Samuels.

HMH, which is organized as an anthology-style textbook packed with passages specifically designed to teach reading skills, has drawn mixed reactions from parents and educators. Some contend that it relies too heavily on excerpts rather than full books and is not culturally responsive. The company disputes both claims. As the city has expanded the curriculum mandate to middle schools while Aviles-Ramos was chancellor, local superintendents largely steered clear of HMH.

The company did more than $40 million in business with the Education Department last year, according to records maintained by the comptroller’s office, and the city has paid HMH over $28 million so far this fiscal year.

Under city law, Aviles-Ramos may not work with the city’s Education Department on behalf of HMH for two years. The law also prohibits her from seeking or negotiating the terms of the job while she was working for the Education Department.

Aviles-Ramos, who declined an interview request through an HMH spokesperson, said in a statement that she will not work with the city’s public schools “in any capacity” and sought out guidance from the Education Department’s ethics office as well as the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board.

“I value this guidance and will continue to abide by all ethical requirements,” she wrote.

Aviles-Ramos is not the first chancellor to decamp to the private sector. Former Chancellor Joel Klein accepted a job running Amplify, a division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, and later served on the board of Juul, an e-cigarette company. And Richard Carranza, who served as schools chief under Mayor Bill de Blasio, joined IXL, an education technology company.

Other schools chiefs have stayed in the public or not-for-profit realms. Dennis Walcott, who was chancellor under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, leads the Queens Public Library system.

“That kind of movement to the private sector is really not unusual,” said Tom Liam Lynch, a former Education Department administrator during the Bloomberg administration who now runs an organization focused on teacher training in New York City.

Lynch said Aviles-Ramos’ experience at all levels of the system — as a parent, teacher, principal, and school system leader — could be an asset in improving their curriculum offerings and help strengthen implementation in big school systems.

“She’s a razor sharp educator,” he said. “I would trust her to navigate the ethics involved.”

Others accused Aviles-Ramos of profiting from her position leading the nation’s largest school system.

“This, to me, is evidence and an example of the corruption that we all expect is there,” said Alina Lewis, a parent at the Brooklyn School of Inquiry who has criticized HMH and pushed the city to give the school an exemption from using the curriculum.

“They’re paying her for the contacts and influence she has at DOE,” she said.

Some teachers took to social media to vent. “We are so tired of this,” one educator wrote on X. “HMH took away the READING OF WHOLE BOOKS.”

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

Better pay, more respect, clearer job description: Here’s what parent coordinators want Mamdani to know.

2026-03-02T21:00:11+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants to change the role of parent coordinators in the city’s schools — making each one “a meaningful organizer of parents, rather than an administrative coordinator reporting to a principal.”

Chalkbeat asked parent coordinators how they see their roles and what they want the mayor to know.

We heard from nearly 360 current parent coordinators, a number that represents nearly 20% of the positions in the city.

You can read a sampling of what they had to say below, but one message was clear: Parent coordinators want to be heard and included in the decisions made about them. And they have lots of ideas for making schools and communities stronger.

Their most important job, they said, is serving as a bridge between parents and schools. Several wrote that their work is especially important for newly arrived families, who may be afraid to engage with government agencies, and for families of students with disabilities.

“When parents trust the school and feel confident reaching out, students benefit academically, socially, and emotionally,” wrote Melissa De Los Santos, a parent coordinator in Brooklyn.

Many parent coordinators said that because the city does not clearly define their roles, they end up taking care of a myriad of loose ends at their schools. They are de-facto tech support, attendance monitors, public health messengers, and counselors for parents and kids.

When asked if they were adequately paid, the response was an emphatic and overwhelming “absolutely not” — often in all caps. In the words of Mariela Chevry, a parent coordinator in Manhattan, “Love doesn’t pay the bills.”

The city created the role of parent coordinator in 2003, a year after the state legislature implemented mayoral control, transferring authority over New York City school budgets, curriculums, and closures from elected community school boards to the mayor.

Then-chancellor Joel Klein told the first-ever cohort of parent coordinators that their jobs were proof that the city was committed to parental involvement.

Now, with Mamdani calling to extend mayoral control under his own tenure, his administration is pointing to parent coordinators as essential players once again.

“We need to build the capacity of our parent coordinators,” said schools chancellor Kamar Samuels at a Feb. 10 City Council hearing on mayoral control. “We need to invest more in our parent coordinators and their training.”

Here are parent coordinators’ top suggestions for the Mamdani administration.

1) Clarify the job description and consider alternative supervision structures

Parent coordinators are often pulled between their responsibility to parents and their accountability to principals, who have significant control over their workloads, salaries, and time off. One of their primary jobs is to help parents bring concerns and complaints to school staff, which can get tricky when administrators and parents disagree. Because their contracts are vague, parent coordinators say their time often gets eaten by administrative tasks outside of the scope of their jobs.

“If I had [to] describe my role it would be closest to a school aid, handling all tasks I’m asked to do even though they don’t relate to my title directly ... Both the contract and role and responsibilities documentation are very vague.” — Dilyon Stanislaus

“We are expected to listen to the concerns of every parent we come across as well as providing resources, creating activities, bring up parent engagement numbers, have answers to all questions, be the face of the school, advocate for parents, all while being asked to do the work of others just because we are support staff and because our contract doesn’t specifically say what we are allowed to say no to.” — Jennifer Colon

“Clear protections, expectations, and respect for the role would allow parent coordinators to focus on what we do best — supporting families, advocating for students, and helping schools function effectively.” — Madelin Lopez

“We are the backbone of the relationship between DOE/admin/faculty and families ... a tenuous relationship for sure. We are treated like customer service representatives when in fact we are community stewards.” — Fernando Maneca

2) Improve pay and benefits, making time off comparable to other full-time school staff

Salaries for new hires start at $44,000 a year, going up to just under $74,000 for those who have already worked for the city for two years. Unlike most school staff, parent coordinators work year-round, with no summers off. They often need to be available early mornings, evenings, and weekends.

“We need decent pay that adjusts to [the] cost of living.” — Sergio Borrero

“Higher pay and summers off. We are overworked and undervalued.” — Jackie Cartagena

“Not only are we not paid well … it feels like we are a dumping ground. If this group can’t do it, doesn’t want to do it, just have the [parent coordinator] figure it out … Since we are on the appreciation topic, we have teacher appreciation day, we have principal and AP appreciation day. PC appreciation day? We don’t have that. Give us our flowers, we work hard and schools would fall apart without us." — Mariela Chevry

3) Elevate respect and include parent coordinators in decisions about their schools and districts

Parent coordinators want to be treated like professionals. Many want formal training and opportunities to move forward in their careers. Despite being the school staff most in touch with parents’ concerns, they are often excluded from decision-making about their schools and districts.

The parent coordinator position has historically been treated as an underdog role in schools, and many principals already fail to show the respect the position deserves." — Vanessa Murray

“Parent coordinators are more than the bridge that connects parents to the admin and school. We are a lifeline to many in our school community ... We need to be seen and heard and deserve so much more respect.” — Illiana Rosario-Urban

“I would love for the mayor to sit down with parent coordinators from the different districts so he can hear directly from us — both our passion for the work and the challenges we face.” — Lynette Bradshaw

“Parent Coordinators should be afforded clearer pathways for advancement and professional development. This could include access to at least two paid classes per semester, greater schedule flexibility, and guaranteed summers off. There is little justification for requiring Parent Coordinators to work throughout the summer performing duties unrelated to family engagement, often … without meaningful choice or autonomy.” — Madelin Lopez

Deputy Managing Editor Caroline Bauman contributed reporting and analysis.

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

NYC mom’s racist remark spurs schools chief’s push to expand Black Studies, parent training

2026-02-26T20:14:03+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Amid uproar over a Manhattan mom’s racist comments during a community meeting, New York City schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels vowed to roll out new parent training and grow the number of schools that use the city’s Black Studies curriculum.

“We need to equip our staff to have courageous conversations focused on shifting attitudes and interrupting prejudice, addressing controversial issues, and coalition-building,” Samuels said during Wednesday night’s Panel for Educational Policy meeting.

He promised to launch training next month to provide “our parents with the tools to combat racism” and said the city’s Black Studies curriculum “should be expanded throughout the city in more districts and schools.”

Samuels also said the Education Department is working on a “broader, system-wide plan because we know that this is not an issue that is localized in District 3,” referring to the commenter’s district, a diverse swath of Manhattan that spans from the Upper West Side to part of Harlem.

Samuels’ comments come in response to a District 3 education council meeting earlier this month. On a hot mic, a mom appeared to insult the intelligence of a Black student who was testifying against a plan to close the child’s school, which mostly serves Black and Latino students, before going on to comment about Black people’s place in society.

The schools chief said the episode “has exposed what many in the Black community believe to be ever-present and simmering anti-Blackness in our city.” Samuels’ promises came one day after Black parent leaders and elected officials urged the city to take more decisive action in response to the incident, which has drawn national and international headlines.

The parent’s offensive remarks came during a Feb. 10 District 3 Community Education Council meeting that included discussion of city proposals to close three of the area’s middle school programs. At the hybrid meeting, with people speaking in person and virtually, a Black student at the Community Action School was testifying in person against the plan to close the school when Allyson Friedman, a parent at another local public school, could be heard on a hot mic on Zoom.

“They’re too dumb to know they’re in a bad school,” said Friedman, a professor at Hunter College.

She then appeared to misattribute and misquote Black historian Carter G. Woodson. “Apparently Martin Luther King said it: If you train a Black person well enough, they’ll know to use the back. You don’t have to tell them anymore,” Friedman said. (The District 3 interim acting superintendent had quoted from Woodson earlier in the meeting in his remarks on Black History Month.)

In the 1933 book, “The Mis-Education of the Negro,” Woodson described how racism in schools can perpetuate inequities. “If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door,” Woodson wrote.

Friedman has since been placed on leave from Hunter College, the Daily News reported.

Friedman previously said in an email that she inadvertently unmuted herself on Zoom and did not intend to share her comments publicly. “As a parent, I was trying to explain the concept of systemic racism by referencing a historical example,” she wrote. “My remarks were not directed at the student speaker, and they do not reflect my beliefs or values. Regardless of context, my words were wrong and caused real harm.”

Parent leaders push for more sweeping changes

Education Department officials did not indicate whether schools would be required to use the Black Studies curriculum, which is currently optional. The federal government has taken a hostile stance toward diversity, equity, and inclusion programming and has investigated some school districts for policies that are specifically geared toward Black students.

Nicole Brownstein, an Education Department spokesperson, said the city does not track how many schools use the Black Studies curriculum, but said it is available to all schools. She said more details about the city’s plans would be released soon.

Multiple parent leaders told Chalkbeat that they were glad that Samuels delivered a more forceful statement on Wednesday that specifically called out anti-Blackness, compared with his initial response on social media days earlier.

“I was very elated with the chancellor’s remark last night,” said NeQuan McLean, the president of the local parent council in Bedford-Stuyvesant. “He understands this work.”

McLean noted that Samuels is Black and worked on integration efforts during his previous roles as superintendent in Brooklyn’s District 13 and Manhattan’s District 3. City officials emphasized that Samuels worked to scale up the Black Studies curriculum in District 3, where it is taught in dozens of classrooms.

But McLean and other parent leaders also want the city to go further to equip schools with resources and give community education councils tools for handling racist comments.

Tanesha Grant, the executive director of Parents Supporting Parents NY, which organized a press conference earlier this week calling for broader changes, said the city should require schools to use the Black Studies curriculum. She said she has raised concerns that the city’s most popular elementary school reading curriculum is not culturally responsive.

“We need something in place that says that it is mandatory for every public school to offer Black Studies,” Grant said.

Grant said it was frustrating that Samuels’ more forceful response came after parents began pressuring the city. (Samuels said he regretted not speaking out sooner.)

“If it hadn’t been for the parents getting together and organizing,” Grant said, “I don’t think his response [on Wednesday evening] would have been like that.”

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

Racist comment at NYC parent meeting ignites fury as Black leaders call for accountability

2026-02-25T01:13:38+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

After an Upper West Side parent’s racist comments were caught on a hot mic at a public meeting, Black parent leaders and elected officials say they want to see accountability for her actions and a broader reckoning from the nation’s largest school system.

A student from the Community Action School was testifying in person against a plan to close the middle school at a Feb. 10 local education council meeting when Allyson Friedman, a parent at another local public school, began speaking on Zoom.

“They’re too dumb to know they’re in a bad school,” said Friedman, who is a professor at Hunter College.

District 3 Interim Acting Superintendent Reginald Higgins cited Woodson earlier in the meeting as part of his reflections on Black History Month. In the 1933 book, “The Mis-Education of the Negro,” Woodson described how racism in schools can perpetuate inequities. “If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door,” Woodson wrote.

Friedman’s comments exploded into public view after a recording was posted online and drew rebukes from an array of elected officials and parent leaders. Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday called the remarks “reprehensible” and “indicative of the exact kind of language that makes students feel as if they don’t belong in our public school system.” A City Hall spokesperson said officials are discussing the incident with CUNY, which oversees Hunter College.

Several Black parent leaders held a press conference Tuesday to condemn Friedman and call on education officials to take action to address inequities in the system. They urged the city’s Education Department to better promote its Black Studies curriculum, deploy the materials more widely, and offer more support for parent leaders grappling with anti-Black racism.

“We are still fighting to be seen as human,” said Tanesha Grant, the executive director of Parents Supporting Parents NY, which organized the press conference. “Our children are still fighting to be seen as human and we will not allow or tolerate anti-Blackness in our school communities.”

Several parents and elected officials said Friedman, a professor in the biological sciences department at Hunter College, should be fired. A Hunter spokesperson said the school is reviewing whether Friedman’s comments violate their policies.

Friedman said in an email that she inadvertently unmuted herself on Zoom and did not intend to share her comments publicly. “As a parent, I was trying to explain the concept of systemic racism by referencing a historical example,” she wrote. “My remarks were not directed at the student speaker, and they do not reflect my beliefs or values. Regardless of context, my words were wrong and caused real harm.”

Comments come at a tricky time for new chancellor

The episode comes at a delicate moment for schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels, who was most recently superintendent of District 3. He built a reputation for listening to parent feedback and for his focus on integrating schools in one of the nation’s most segregated systems.

Samuels helped launch the process of closing three middle school programs in the district, including Community Action School, partly due to anemic enrollment. District officials are considering moving The Center School, where Friedman is a parent, to a new building more than a mile away.

The Center School, which is majority white, would share a building with P.S. 191, which is largely Black and Latino and would lose its middle school grades. Separately, the Community Action School, which predominantly enrolls students of color from low-income families, would be closed entirely.

Those proposals have all generated considerable pushback, and Friedman’s comments reopened longstanding questions about equity and access in a stratified school district.

Parent leaders at the Center School distanced themselves from the incident. “We want to be absolutely clear: this parent’s statement does not represent the values of the Center School community,” the school’s PTA wrote in a statement posted to its website. “Yet their words remind us that racism is not distant – it exists in our broader community, and it is our collective responsibility to confront it.”

For his part, Samuels vowed to support students who were affected. “I know that district quite intimately, and we will be really leaning in and working with the school communities to make sure that we repair any harm that was done to our students,” Samuels told reporters Tuesday.

Education Department spokesperson Dominique Ellison did not elaborate on what actions the city plans to take but noted that Friedman is not a department employee or parent council member.

Community Action School parent Nicki Holtzman said the school has done an “incredible job” responding to the incident. “To my understanding, the kids were not told, and they’ve been protected,” she said. (The student who Friedman interrupted may not have heard the comment because they were testifying in person and Friedman was on Zoom.) Still, Holtzman worries the episode will distract from the school community’s push to keep its doors open.

Several parent leaders indicated Tuesday that their frustration is much broader than Friedman’s comments. They pointed to repeated instances of systemic racism and anti-Black attitudes, including from other parent leaders.

“I’ve watched people employ every archaic, toxic, stereotypical red herring they can to try to slow us down and to try to justify why it is okay to underserve a Black child,” said Erika Kendall, the Community Education Council president in Brooklyn’s District 17. “But also why it is okay to ignore and dismiss the concerns of a Black parent.”

NeQuan McLean, the president of the Community Education Council in Bedford-Stuyvesant, proposed one idea for giving parent leaders considerably more power. He said local councils should have the power to sign off on mergers and closures, which usually affect schools that are struggling with enrollment and tend to have a higher proportion of Black and Latino children.

On the campaign trail, Mamdani vowed to end mayoral control of schools — which gives City Hall much of the power over those decisions — but later backtracked.

The councils “are community school boards that have been stripped of their power, and we need that power back,” McLean said.

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

NYC public schools will reopen for in-person classes on Tuesday after major blizzard, Mamdani says

2026-02-23T19:12:04+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

New York City’s public schools will reopen on Tuesday after a major blizzard dumped over 20 inches of snow on parts of the city, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Monday afternoon.

“I hope our students enjoy their snow day today and stay warm and safe throughout, but I do have some tough news to share: School will be in person tomorrow,” Mamdani said. “You can still pelt me with snowballs when you see me.”

School officials said thousands of Education Department staff have been working around the clock to ensure schools are ready to reopen on Tuesday.

“We will make sure we’re down to asphalt and concrete sidewalks at every school,” said Kevin Moran, the acting deputy chancellor for operations.

It remains to be seen how treacherous travel conditions will be as nearly 900,000 public school students return to class. About 150,000 students rely on yellow buses, which often falter in normal weather. Officials said they are plowing and salting the streets, and school buses are expected to run as usual.

Monday marked the first traditional snow day in years when students and educators were not required to participate in remote instruction. Since the pandemic, schools have switched to virtual learning during extreme weather because the city has added holidays and has no wiggle room to cancel class while meeting a state requirement to offer 180 school days.

New York State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa offered waivers to districts that canceled classes on Monday. New York City was on break the prior week, complicating efforts to send devices home to students. New York City is now on track to have only 175 days of school. (The city counted four days of teacher training this year to meet the 180-day threshold.)

Many parents and educators cheered the traditional snow day, which gave students time to have fun in the snow. Some research backs up the idea that a small number of snow days are unlikely to harm student learning. Plus, attendance during virtual learning is often spotty, making it difficult for teachers to cover new material.

Still, snow days often pose challenges for working families who must scramble to find child care and may depend on schools to provide meals and other services.

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

Two coveted Queens high schools wanted the same new building. Both may get new homes.

2026-02-21T00:02:57+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Queens’ only specialized high school may soon get its long-awaited new home — and another selective Queens high school vying for the same building has secured funding for a new space of its own, officials said.

The city’s Panel for Educational Policy is expected to vote Feb. 25 on a proposal to relocate Queens High School for the Sciences to a bigger building in Jamaica’s District 28, a move that students have been waiting for since the high school’s opening 24 years ago.

Queens High School for the Sciences, often referred to as QHSS, is housed across 14 classrooms on the second floor of York College’s Jamaica campus and is over capacity by roughly 130 students.

The new school building at 165-15 88th Avenue is less than a mile away from the York campus, and would allow QHSS to expand from roughly 500 students up to 700 by the 2029-30 school year, according to Department of Education projections in the Jan. 9 relocation proposal.

HBCU Early College Prep was also eyeing the 88th Ave building but has since come up with plans for a site of their own, said Greg Faulkner, chair of the Panel for Educational Policy, who was briefed on plans by Education Department officials.

“I don’t foresee obstacles at the vote meeting,” Faulkner said, “and with this new announcement of HBCU’s plans, I expect the proposal will pass. It’s a win-win.”

A relocation promised two decades ago

The Queens High School for the Sciences is one of eight schools in New York City that admit students based solely on Specialized High School Admissions Test scores.

If approved, QHSS students would move to the new school building in the fall, sharing the facility with up to 100 students at P.S. 438, a newly opened high school in District 75 serving students with complex disabilities.

Students at QHSS say relocating to a larger facility would help the school address a range of overcrowding issues: large classes, limited access to shared spaces like libraries, and lack of dedicated science laboratories and art rooms.

“As the No. 1 high school in the state, they should be able to offer a range of sports teams, clubs, and extracurriculars that other specialized schools have,” said Shirley Aubin, the Queens borough president’s appointee to the Panel for Educational Policy, referring to the school’s U.S. News and World reporting ranking within New York State.

Aubin said QHSS has been waiting for their own building since opening their doors in 2002.

“I remember being drawn to QHSS; it was just a few minutes away from where I lived. I was ready to commit until I learned that it had no building,” Stuyvesant High School freshman Saadat Azam told The Cardinal Chronicles, the student newspaper at QHSS, in April.

Despite its limited facilities, 11,809 New York City students listed QHSS on their Specialized High School application, and just 148 students received offers, according to the Education Department.

Vinny Dong, a sophomore at QHSS who has commented at three panel meetings in the past year, said sharing the York College campus created pressing academic and quality of life issues for his school.

QHSS students receive pre-made lunches prepared off-site and, instead of a cafeteria, have two microwaves located in a basement room. The shared gym, which is located two blocks off-campus, can only be accessed by QHSS students between 8:00 a.m. and 12:30 p.m., according to the Cardinal.

“We serve 514 students and we have a grand total of one floor. Our gym is two blocks away across a very active road. I almost got run over, by the way,” Dong said at the November panel meeting.

HBCU Prep to announce relocation funding

HBCU Early College Prep, a selective Queens high school that offers college credits and an associate degree upon graduation, opened its doors to its inaugural class of ninth graders last fall.

Students begin synchronous college courses in 11th grade, thanks to its partnership with Delaware State University, a historically Black college.

The school serves local Queens students, reserving up to 40% of its seats for District 29 residents, 40% for those from District 27 and 28, and the remaining 10% of seats for other Queens residents. The program aims to provide Southeast Queens residents with an alternative to specialized high schools, the bulk of which are located outside of these districts.

HBCU Prep admits applicants based on their seventh grade GPAs, a writing assessment, and a video.

The school had also asked to move into the new building on 88th Street, but overcrowding isn’t a concern in their current facility shared with I.S. 238 and P.S. 9 Walter Reed School. According to Department of Education enrollment projections, the building HBCU occupies will reach 80% capacity by the 2029 school year.

Officials at the Education Department’s Office of District Planning told Faulkner that HBCU Prep is expected to announce that budget funds have been set aside for the school’s own relocation, though the timeline and building site have not yet been determined.

Faulkner said he originally advocated for HBCU Prep to relocate to the new building, but after touring the cramped QHSS campus at York College, he saw that the high school’s facilities are “bursting at the seams” and “are not sufficient to allow QHSS to grow.”

HBCU Prep is expected to make an official announcement about their relocation plans at the Feb. 25 vote, Faulkner said. Information about the hearing and live streaming can be found here.

Correction: Feb. 21, 2026: This story initially said that the address of the proposed new location for Queens High School for the Sciences was 165-15 88th St. The correct address is 165-15 88th Avenue.

Lizzie Walsh is a Data Fellow at Chalkbeat New York, reporting NYC local news and data-driven stories across Chalkbeat’s bureaus. Contact her at ewalsh@chalkbeat.org.

Mamdani prioritizes class size mandate and Summer Rising in preliminary budget

2026-02-17T22:30:43+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s preliminary budget plans to ramp up spending to comply with the state class size mandate and will continue to fund the city’s free summer program that combines academics and enrichment.

Several other education programs were not included. They include a program that focuses on restorative justice — a conflict resolution approach that prioritizes talking through problems rather than punitive discipline — and one that provides intensive mental health support at dozens of Bronx and Brooklyn schools.

The mayor’s preliminary $127 billion budget, released Tuesday, represents his opening salvo in negotiations with City Council over city spending next fiscal year, which begins July 1. It also offers a window into his education priorities.

Mamdani told reporters the city is “firmly within a budget crisis” and pressured Gov. Kathy Hochul to support his proposal to raise taxes on corporations and people making more than $1 million a year.

The city is facing a $5.4 billion gap over the next two fiscal years, an ever-changing figure the mayor indicated was closer to $12 billion earlier this month. Mamdani said without additional revenue, city officials would hike property taxes to plug the gap. He also called on city agencies to find savings of 1.5% this year and 2.5% next fiscal year.

“For those who have watched budget after budget, it is tempting to assume that we are engaging in the same dance as our predecessors,” Mamdani said, blaming former Mayor Eric Adams for leaving behind a big budget gap. “Let me assure you, nothing about this is typical.”

Over the weekend, Mamdani and Hochul announced the state would kick in $1.5 billion more dollars into the city budget over the next two years for operating costs, including about $300 million for youth programming. (Officials have not said what programs that funding will support.)

Here are three takeaways from the mayor’s preliminary budget.

More funding to shrink class sizes

The city is facing a state requirement to cap class sizes at 20 students in elementary school to 25 in high school. Eighty percent of classes must fall below those caps next school year, with all classes expected to meet them by the 2027-28 school year.

Mamdani’s budget includes nearly $543 million in new city spending next school year to reduce class sizes and estimates jumping to nearly $943 million in each of the three fiscal years after that.

An Education Department spokesperson did not immediately say how that money will be spent, though officials have recently said they will need an additional 6,000 teachers at a cost of more than $600 million to meet the mandate.

The Education Department has already struggled to meet the law’s requirements and has issued thousands of exemptions from it. Meeting the mandate will only get more challenging, officials have warned, as the city faces difficult tradeoffs at crowded schools, which must cap the number of students who can attend, find new space, or receive an exemption from the law.

Stabilized funding for summer school and preschool special education

During the pandemic, city officials launched a popular summer program that combines enrichment and academics using one-time federal relief money. Ever since, the Summer Rising program has been funded in one-year increments. The city had not guaranteed funding for this summer.

Mamdani’s preliminary budget includes $106 million for this summer’s program and includes money to keep it going in the three fiscal years after that.

Officials also renewed $70 million in funding for preschool special education services, evaluations, and staff — though, despite that funding, many students still do not receive all of the help to which they’re entitled.

Advocates cheered the mayor for including the funding. But Maria Odom, executive director of the nonprofit Advocates for Children, stressed that “as the City moves forward with its plans for universal child care, it must ensure that young children with disabilities are not left waiting for the support they need and have a right to receive.”

The mayor’s proposed budget also includes nearly $50 million a year to open new classes in District 75, which supports students with more complex disabilities.

Some education programs left out

Several education programs that are at least partially funded with dollars that are set to run out in June were not included in the mayor’s budget, in addition to the $6 million for restorative justice and $5 million for mental health support.

Officials did not include funding for Learning to Work, a $31 million effort that pays for internships, social workers, and guidance counselors for students at risk of dropping out. Also left out: a $12 million wraparound program for students with disabilities who have sensory issues that interfere with school performance.

It will be up to local lawmakers and the mayor to determine if those items are restored, as they have been in previous years.

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

NYC school board member faces outcry for using R-word in Bad Bunny Super Bowl post

2026-02-09T21:17:01+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Joe Borelli, a member of New York City’s school board, is facing backlash for using the word retarded in a social media post on Sunday evening.

The post was a response to U.S. Rep. Shri Thanedar, who shared a photo of himself on the social media site X smiling in front of a television during Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance. Thanedar, a Michigan Democrat, captioned the image: “Loving it!!”

Borelli, a member of the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, quoted Thanedar’s post with his own comment: “This was the most retarded thing to happen during the Bad Bunny show.” The post has since been deleted.

A screen grab of a Tweet by Joe Borelli, who then deleted it.

Former Mayor Eric Adams appointed Borelli, a former leader of City Council’s Republican delegation, to the panel in the final weeks of his administration. The panel oversees the nation’s largest school system and votes on major contracts, policy changes, and school closures. More than 1 in 5 New York City public school students has a disability, or over 200,000 children.

Greg Faulkner, who chairs the school board, called on Borelli to apologize Monday morning.

The word is a “harmful slur that carries a long history of marginalization and pain for the disability community,” Faulker wrote in a letter to Borelli. “Such language is fundamentally at odds with the mission of this Panel and the inclusive environment we strive to build for our students and their families.”

Some parent leaders shared similar sentiments with Borelli.

Borelli acknowledged that the language was not appropriate given his role on the panel. “I apologize to the chair and the members of the board,” he told Chalkbeat.

He added: “As stupid as the member of congress taking selfies with his TV was, it’s not as stupid as my comment.”

All of Adams’ appointees to the school board have terms that run through June, which means Mayor Zohran Mamdani will not be able to appoint a majority of the board until then.

But under state law, Mamdani can remove mayoral appointees to the school board for “good cause” if a public explanation for the removal is provided 10 days in advance and the appointee has a chance to refute the claims (they cannot be removed simply for voting against the mayor’s wishes).

A Mamdani spokesperson deferred to the Education Department for comment and did not respond to a question about whether the mayor would consider removing Borelli.

“We are unwavering in our support for all of our students, regardless of background or disability, and we strongly condemn the type of language used by a PEP member yesterday evening,” Education Department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein wrote in a statement.

Use of the word retarded has exploded in recent years on X, spurred in part by Elon Musk’s use of it, researchers have found. Other high-profile conservative figures have used it, too. President Donald Trump used the word in a social media post to refer to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz last Thanksgiving. Joe Rogan, whose podcast has topped the charts in recent years, described the trend last April as “one of the great cultural victories.”

The phrase “mental retardation” was once considered a socially acceptable term, though it has fallen out of favor. In 2010, the federal government replaced the phrase in federal legislation and policies with “intellectual disability.”

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

Judge rejects bid to raise burden of proof in NYC school suspension hearings

2026-02-03T19:01:34+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit this week that sought to force New York City to use a higher standard of proof before issuing longer-term suspensions.

When students are removed from school for more than five days, families have the right to a hearing where a hearing officer weighs the evidence and makes a discipline recommendation.

In a lawsuit filed in May, Legal Services NYC argued that the standard of proof at those hearings — “substantial and competent” evidence — requires less than a 50% chance a student did what they were accused of and violates their due process rights. The suit pushed for a “preponderance of the evidence” standard, which would require slightly more than 50% certainty.

In his decision dismissing the lawsuit on Monday, U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken wrote that the “substantial and competent” evidence standard is constitutionally sufficient. He noted that the lawsuit cites no cases in which a court required the higher standard for student suspensions and contended that the current system already has some safeguards, such as giving families the chance to present evidence and cross-examine witnesses during suspension hearings.

He also raised concerns that the higher standard would “burden the school discipline process with stricter procedures and a more onerous standard of proof.”

Advocates have long raised concerns that schools can suspend students based on flimsy evidence. They also note that Black students and those with disabilities are disproportionately removed from their classrooms.

In response to the ruling, Legal Services NYC attorney Michaela Shuchman said that suspensions can knock students off track and deprive them of school meals, health services provided on many campuses, and special education support. The organization provides free legal help for families going through suspension proceedings.

“We are disappointed by this decision,” Shuchman wrote. “The least New York City can do is ensure that students have constitutionally adequate protections before facing these harms.” She said the organization is considering whether to appeal.

A spokesperson for the city’s Law Department said it is reviewing the decision and declined further comment.

Oetken noted that students who are removed from school for more than five days still have the right to instruction, and that the students involved in the lawsuit all faced suspensions of 17 days or fewer.

“Some experts legitimately point to the serious negative effects of suspensions, while others argue that ‘zero tolerance’ policies are necessary to maintain discipline in schools,” Oetken wrote. “But the Due Process Clause is a blunt instrument, not well suited to such difficult policy choices.”

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

Eric Dinowitz is City Council’s new education chair. Here’s what he wants to prioritize.

2026-01-28T21:39:07+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

The nation’s largest school system is now under new oversight.

City Council member Eric Dinowitz, whose district spans the northwest Bronx, was recently tapped to chair the council’s education committee. He’s taking over from Rita Joseph, who held the post over the last four years. Joseph will now helm the council’s higher education committee, the post Dinowitz previously held.

Among the committee chair’s most significant powers is to convene oversight hearings that require top Education Department officials to publicly testify on crucial issues facing the city’s schools. Past hearings have drawn attention to flaws with the special education system, school segregation, and a botched attempt to pivot to remote learning during a snowstorm.

Dinowitz’s first oversight hearing next month will focus on mayoral control of the city’s schools, a governance system Mayor Zohran Mamdani criticized during the campaign, but now says he wants to keep.

The new committee chair’s ties to city schools run deep — “K through career” — Dinowitz recently quipped. He grew up attending public schools in the Bronx and graduated from Bronx Science, one of the city’s vaunted specialized high schools. He taught in the public school system for more than 13 years before running for City Council in 2021, following in the footsteps of his father who represents the Bronx in the state assembly.

We caught up with Dinowitz about his experience with the city’s schools, his assessment of the system, and what issues he wants to prioritize. Here are six takeaways from that conversation.

He got his start teaching students with disabilities

Dinowitz launched his career in education through the city’s Teaching Fellows program, a fast track into the classroom for career changers and recent college graduates. The experience was overwhelming. But he wound up in a classroom that included a mix of students with disabilities and general education students, which meant he had a co-teacher to learn from.

“You’re thrown right in,” he said. “I got to experience teaching with another teacher, seeing what they did, what worked, what didn’t work.”

He mostly taught at schools in his home borough, including Bronx Theatre High School, Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music, and then briefly at NEST+M, a Manhattan gifted and talented program.

Special education is a perennial focus of the education committee, and Dinowitz indicated he will prioritize it, too. He pointed to the city’s growing costs for special education placements in private schools, the need to better integrate students with disabilities with general education peers, and ensuring student learning plans, known as individualized education programs, or IEPs, reflect the help students actually need rather than being a compliance exercise.

Phaseout of Regents exams is top of mind

The requirement that students must pass Regents exams — standardized tests that students must pass to graduate — has created perverse incentives, Dinowitz contends.

“If a superintendent comes in and says, ‘We’re going to strictly look at your Regents scores and your credit accrual,’ you’re incentivizing principals to take money out of things like the arts,” he said.

Officials are in the process of phasing out Regents exams, and Dinowitz said he will be watching closely as city and state leaders think through new graduation standards and how they will affect teaching and learning.

“We have to make sure that the assessments measure what we want the kids to do and who we want them to be,” he said.

Small schools should be merged

As enrollment declines have accelerated since the pandemic, the city is facing a glut of small schools that are expensive to run and often struggle to offer a full range of programs.

Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels has indicated mergers may be necessary to tackle the problem, moves that often generate fierce pushback. Dinowitz said he agrees with Samuels, noting some small schools can’t support specialized programs for students with disabilities — or electives that draw in students.

“There typically isn’t critical mass for a lot of those programs,” he said. “I do believe mergers should be on the table.” He noted those decisions should be made carefully with opportunity for community input.

Looking for a clearer vision from City Hall

Mamdani said little about how to improve the city’s public school system on the campaign trail — and Dinowitz said he’s looking for a larger vision.

“We need to be talking a lot more about education,” he said. “It sounds like Mayor Mamdani is still formulating exactly what he wants to do.”

Open to school integration efforts — but don’t touch the SHSAT

Mamdani and Samuels have indicated that they want to pursue school integration efforts, which former Mayor Eric Adams largely ignored, though they have said little about their plans.

On the campaign trail, Mamdani suggested he was open to rethinking admissions to eight specialized high schools that admit students based on a single test and enroll few Black and Latino applicants. He wound up reversing that position, saying the exam should stay.

“I’m glad he backed away from that,” said Dinowitz, who, along with Mamdani, attended Bronx Science.

Still, Dinowitz said he is open to other modes of school integration such as rezonings or merging schools with different racial demographics, something Samuels pursued as a superintendent in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Dinowitz emphasized any changes should include community input.

“People who are going to be affected by policy need to have a seat at the table,” he said.

Creative solutions to class size mandate

One of the biggest challenges facing the Education Department is a state mandate to slash class sizes, which will require hiring thousands of new teachers and cost billions of dollars.

The state should pony up more funding to fulfill that requirement, Dinowitz said. He also encouraged the city to pursue creative solutions like staggering school schedules on campuses that have limited space to shrink classes and avoid capping enrollment.

“I’m not sure there’s any single variable more impactful to student learning than class size,” he said.

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

Who is Kamar Samuels? Meet Zohran Mamdani’s schools chancellor.

2026-01-15T16:23:05+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Shortly after Mayor Zohran Mamdani tapped Kamar Samuels to run New York City’s public schools, the two visited a Brooklyn campus where they were swarmed by students jockeying for selfies.

Mamdani soon peeled away, but Samuels toured the school, Arts & Letters 305 United, where he ducked into a room of third graders and began counting students.

As a local superintendent overseeing dozens of campuses, first in Brooklyn and then in Manhattan, Samuels often informally surveyed classroom headcounts on his visits. He’d later check official registers to see how many students were missing that day, a key measure of whether students are engaged at school.

“I really don’t have to do this,” Samuels said with a laugh after leaving the room of 21 third graders. “It’s kind of like muscle memory.”

Mamdani told Chalkbeat he selected Samuels, 48, because of his granular knowledge of the city’s classrooms, learned during more than two decades as a teacher, principal, and superintendent. The mayor also cited Samuels’ track record of pursuing ambitious change.

In both of the racially diverse New York City local districts he oversaw, Samuels used school mergers to address declining enrollment and persistent segregation. He led a transition away from gifted programs, replacing them with International Baccalaureate offerings available to all students. And he helped guide a plan to diversify several Brooklyn middle schools by setting aside a portion of seats for low-income students.

Those moves sometimes generated pushback. But Education Department colleagues saw him as a leader who doesn’t shy away from thorny problems and crafts solutions based on input from schools and families. In nearly 20 interviews with educators, parents, and former and current city officials, Samuels was described as someone who builds deep community ties, listens to critics, and focuses on student outcomes.

“He has not been afraid to touch the third rail and have difficult conversations — be it around equity, low enrollment, the concept of rigor, and the disparities in test scores throughout our district,” said Jill Rackmill, co-president of the parent council in District 3 in Manhattan, which Samuels supervised as superintendent. “Ultimately, he makes the hard decisions and does the tough things.”

In his first week on the job, Samuels told principals that he will build on some of the prior administration’s biggest initiatives, including new career education programs and an overhaul of elementary school reading.

And the new schools chief has pointed to other big problems facing the system, including cratering enrollment and alarming rates of chronic absenteeism, in which 1 in 3 students now miss more than 10% of the school year. He recently gave the system’s overall performance a “C” grade.

Shael Polakow-Suransky, the president of the Bank Street College of Education and a former top Education Department official, said he believes Samuels is up to the challenge.

“He’s politically gifted in a way that’s similar to the mayor,” Polakow-Suransky said. “He’s someone who inspires people and really gets them excited about his vision and supporting change.”

Samuels’ built a reputation for listening early on

Samuels, who moved to New York from Jamaica at age 15, originally pursued a career in finance, landing an accounting job at the National Basketball Association. He hated it.

He saw a subway ad for the city’s Teaching Fellows Program, a fast-track initiative that funnels career-changers into city classrooms. Within a few months, he was teaching sixth grade math at P.S./M.S. 194 in the Bronx.

Over the next two decades, Samuels rose through the ranks at the Education Department, earning a reputation for his strong rapport with community members.

Page Best-Hardy, a retired family leadership coordinator in District 23, which includes Brownsville and Ocean Hill, recalled that when Samuels was a deputy superintendent there nearly a decade ago an attendee at a back-to-school event confronted him about the poor performance of local schools. Samuels wasn’t defensive and won over the crowd by saying he needed their help to improve student outcomes.

“He didn’t say things were all rosy,” Best-Hardy recounted. “They didn’t expect that.”

As the superintendent of District 13, which runs from Brooklyn Heights to Bedford-Stuyvesant, Samuels not only cared about getting to know nearly everyone at the schools he oversaw, but he also was laser-focused on assessment data, said Emily Paige, principal of The Urban Assembly Unison School in Clinton Hill.

During one visit to the school, when he had come to evaluate Paige, she found him in the cafeteria introducing himself to the kitchen staff and sampling the food. He also spent time with Paige reviewing students’ scores on citywide reading assessments.

Samuels took a look at a chart of test scores Paige had prepared and homed in on a single student. “‘What is that telling you about this one child? What does that score mean?’” Paige recalled Samuels asking her. The conversation prompted Paige to think more carefully about how teachers should use the assessment data to tweak their instruction for students who are behind in reading.

That was a “really important moment for us as a school,” Paige said.

Mergers have tested Samuels’ leadership

As superintendent of District 13 and District 3 in Manhattan — a diverse district that includes the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights, and parts of Harlem — Samuels became known for carefully crafting mergers.

In both districts, he combined schools with different demographic profiles to foster integration while addressing declining enrollment. The proposals sparked fraught conversations about school resources and race. But Samuels stuck to his plans, drawing on the relationships he had forged with community members.

In his first full week as chancellor, Samuels highlighted that record by hosting Mamdani at Arts & Letters 305 United in District 13. The school is the result of a merger between Arts & Letters, a more affluent and overenrolled Fort Greene school that served a disproportionate share of white students, and P.S. 305, an underenrolled majority-Black campus in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

“I see a model and an example for the rest of the city,” Samuels declared to a group of parent leaders, school staff, and elected officials.

Samuels told Chalkbeat that mergers may become increasingly necessary, as K-12 enrollment has plunged in recent years. About 793,000 students attend the city’s public schools this year according to preliminary figures, a loss of well over 100,000 children since 2020. As schools shrink, they often struggle to afford basic programs because funding is tied to headcount.

P.S. 305 had slipped below 100 students, making it a prime target. But the merger, finalized in 2020, was at times contentious. Several P.S. 305 families feared it was a takeover of their school. Meanwhile, some Arts & Letters families worried about moving to Bed-Stuy — concerns that had racial undertones connected to neighborhood crime and the school’s concentration of homeless students, according to a case study on the merger released by the city comptroller’s office.

Education Department officials involved in the process were impressed with how Samuels engaged the school communities to build support and diffuse conflict — a sharp contrast with many other consolidations.

“By the time we got to the vote, there was broad consensus,” said Karin Goldmark, a former deputy chancellor who led a public hearing with Samuels about the merger. “It’s a testament to the depth of engagement that he did.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels visit students and staff at Arts & Letters 305 United, a campus Samuels helped merge in 2020.

Samuels’ track record of building community support was likely a selling point for Mamdani. On the campaign trail, the mayor vowed to give educators and families more input in Education Department decisions, though he backtracked from a promise to end mayoral control of the system. Samuels’ experience shifting schools away from gifted programs also lines up with another Mamdani campaign pledge.

Still, not everyone has been impressed with Samuels’ approach to community engagement.

Morana Mesic, a former parent at West Side Collaborative, an Upper West Side middle school, was devastated when the school merged into Lafayette Academy in 2023 — a proposal from Samuels that drew considerable backlash in District 3.

“We will always consider it the closure of our school,” said Mesic, who was the PTA president at West Side Collaborative at the time. The merger disrupted her son’s education. Mesic declined to send him to the newly merged school and struggled to find a campus that was a good fit, ultimately transferring her son to two different middle schools.

Mesic felt some details were left out of initial conversations, including that the school would lose its longtime principal and parent coordinator. She acknowledged that Samuels set up many community meetings to hash out the details but they felt performative to her. “They put a lot of dates on the calendar so they could say to reporters and the media, ‘Look how much effort was put into the process,’” she said.

Still, Mesic is a fan of Mamdani and is willing to give Samuels time to prove himself as chancellor.

The new schools chief has wasted little time trying to earn that trust. His first order of business was to launch a whirlwind tour to visit schools in each of the city’s 45 districts during his first two months in office.

Many of those early visits have included informal roundtable discussions with students, parent leaders, staff, and local elected officials. At Arts & Letters, Samuels gave a short overview of his background and high-level priorities around rigor, safety, and integration before taking questions on the tiny number of school librarians and how he would support parent leaders.

Unlike some of his predecessors, Samuels has avoided making waves in his first days in office.

Before he lays out how he thinks the system should change, Samuels said he needs input. The goal isn’t to get everyone to like him, he said. It’s to generate buy-in for the solutions he ultimately proposes.

“It’s not just about, ‘Do parents like you?” Samuels said during his first meeting with the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council. “It’s about: What are we achieving when we work together? And are we solving the biggest problems together?”

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.

Trump administration launches investigation into NYC schools over trans sports policies

2026-01-14T22:14:29+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Federal officials launched an investigation Wednesday into New York City’s Education Department, targeting a policy that allows transgender students to play on sports teams in line with their gender identity.

The U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights contends that the city’s rules violate Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination at educational entities that receive federal funding.

The Trump administration launched investigations into 18 educational institutions on Wednesday that all have similar policies on trangender students’ participation in sports, including 14 school districts, three colleges, and Hawaii’s state education department.

“Time and again, the Trump Administration has made its position clear: violations of women’s rights, dignity, and fairness are unacceptable,” Kimberly Richey, assistant secretary for civil rights, wrote in a statement.

Federal officials did not respond to a question about whether their investigation was motivated by any specific examples of how New York City’s policy is being applied. A spokesperson said the investigation is in response to city policies that allow transgender girls to play on girls’ sports teams. They are also investigating transgender students’ access to other facilities.

The city’s Education Department did not immediately return a request for comment.

This is not the first time the Trump administration has invoked its contested interpretation of federal civil rights laws to target the nation’s largest school system.

Last year, federal officials announced plans to withhold tens of millions in grant funding for several New York City magnet school programs because of city policies allowing transgender students to play on sports teams and use bathrooms in accordance with their gender identity. Former Mayor Eric Adams indicated he was open to changing the policies, though he had little power to do so and the city ultimately sued to block the cuts. That case has not been resolved.

The Trump administration announced the investigations the same week that the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two lawsuits seeking to overturn state-level bans on transgender athletes participating in girls’ sports. The court’s conservative majority is expected to uphold those bans — but not to rule on whether allowing such participation violates Title IX.

National editor Erica Meltzer contributed.

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

Gov. Hochul calls for math instruction overhaul in State of State address

2026-01-14T00:53:59+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to revamp the way the state’s schools teach math.

Hochul announced the plan in her annual State of the State address on Tuesday, along with several child care and education initiatives she has previewed over the past week. The governor’s broader agenda includes funding a new, free child care program for 2-year-olds in New York City; expanding pre-K and child care vouchers statewide; growing a mental health training program for high schoolers; bolstering the state’s teacher training pipeline; and building on free community college for adults who want to train for high-demand careers.

The governor’s office released few details about the plan to overhaul math, but in its 2026 State of the State Book outlining Hochul’s priorities for the year, state officials compared it to existing efforts to revamp literacy instruction. The governor has worked with teachers and school districts to adopt evidence-based “science of reading” practices that focus on phonics and explicit reading instruction, state officials wrote.

Similarly, Hochul said in her Tuesday speech that it is time to get “back to basics” in math. “My hope is for New York students to be the most academically prepared in the country,” Hochul said.

To that end, she will introduce legislation to require the State Education Department to provide school districts with best practices for teaching math and guidance on selecting math curriculums that align with state standards.

The state will also require the State University of New York and the City University of New York to offer extra training in evidence-based math instruction to teachers, especially in New York’s districts with the lowest math performance.

“With these proposals, New York parents can rest assured that there is no better place for their children to learn and thrive than here in our state,” Hochul said.

New York City is already several years into an experiment in mandating and standardizing school curriculums in the name of evidence-based teaching practices. Well before the state rolled out its curriculum recommendations, former Mayor Eric Adams introduced a teaching overhaul called NYC Reads, which required elementary schools to use one of three city-approved reading programs.

At the same time, under a math reform called NYC Solves, the city required high schools, and later some middle schools, to adopt a standardized curriculum for algebra.

Some educators and experts contended that it didn’t make sense to introduce a math overhaul in high school, when many students were already far behind and lacked the vocabulary or tools to follow what was being taught.

New York City’s new schools chancellor, Kamar Samuels, seems to agree.

Math reform should start with elementary schools, he recently told CBS. “If we don’t do math well,” Samuels added, students won’t “be ready for the jobs that exist, much less the jobs that don’t.”

Samuels also argued for a balancing a “back-to-basics” approach to math that emphasizes memorization and math facts with a focus on creative problem-solving. Conceptual understanding is important, Samuels said, but parents “look back at me and say, ‘My kid is in fourth grade and doesn’t know the times tables.’”

“We think of [times tables] as an old thing, but we absolutely need to incorporate it so that our parents can believe in what we do again,” Samuels said.

The jury remains out on whether New York City’s curriculum mandates have improved performance. The Adams administration pointed to assessments they said were evidence of positive results, but education experts say it’s too soon to draw conclusions.

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

Exclusive: NYC schools chancellor Kamar Samuels on mergers, integration, and screened schools

2026-01-08T23:32:01+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

On Kamar Samuels’ fourth school day as chancellor, he brought Mayor Zohran Mamdani to a Brooklyn school he views as a blueprint for tackling two major problems: segregation and sagging enrollment.

Samuels played a leading role merging two different school communities into Arts & Letters 305 United five years ago. The move combined P.S. 305, an underenrolled majority Black campus in Bedford-Stuyvesant, with Arts & Letters, a highly coveted more affluent school in Fort Greene serving one of the district’s largest shares of white students.

“I see a model and an example for the rest of the city,” Samuels told a group of parent leaders, educators, and elected officials, vowing not to “ugly cry” during Thursday’s visit. “It’s beyond what I had dreamt about.”

Deploying school mergers with an eye toward integration has been a hallmark of Samuels’ leadership. He used the strategy from his time overseeing schools in Brooklyn’s District 13 and brought it to his next role as superintendent of Manhattan’s District 3.

In an exclusive interview with Chalkbeat, Mamdani said he selected Samuels because of his deep knowledge of the city’s public schools and his track record taking on thorny problems.

“I told him that we needed a leader who was fluent in the system,” Mamdani said. “In him, I have seen someone who has been able to tackle the challenges that we have become used to as well as deliver the results that we haven’t always seen.”

Before the opening bell, Mamdani greeted dozens of families who circled him in the schoolyard. Some parents snapped selfies while students rushed into the scrum to shake the mayor’s hand. “Have a great day at school,” Mamdani scribbled in fifth grader Rafi’s notebook before offering his autograph. “Yo, I’m crashing out,” a student shouted after recognizing the new mayor.

After Samuels toured the school, Chalkbeat caught up with the schools chief to ask how he hopes to address school segregation, boost results for students who are struggling academically in the wake of the pandemic, and whether he agrees with the mayor’s assessment that charter schools siphon resources from district schools.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You moved here when you were 15 from Jamaica. I’m curious what your schooling was like both in Jamaica and when you moved here.

I started out in school in Jamaica — in a school that was one of the first schools that integrated physically disabled students with able-bodied students.

It was an experiment that they were doing in Jamaica. There was a lot of stigma associated with physically disabled students. And my parents signed up. They believed in having an inclusive environment. It was called The Hope Valley Experimental School.

And then after that, in Jamaica, you can take a test, or you could, at the time in fifth grade, it was called the common entrance test. And then you could go to what we call high school, which essentially is from seventh grade to 12th.

I went to this high school, Jamaica College, and then I ended up graduating high school in Jamaica when I was 15 and I moved here. It was too late to apply to college, and my mom was like, ‘You’re too young to do any of that.’ So for the first semester, she sent me to Evander Childs High School in the Bronx. I was there for probably a semester after which we applied to the CUNY system. Bronx Community College was close to me. So I went there for a little bit, and then I transferred to Baruch College. I graduated college when I was 20.

My mom said, ‘You are good at math, you should go do accounting.’ So I did accounting. I absolutely hated it. I hated it so much. I said to myself, ‘If I try to get a job in sports, just to be an accountant in sports.’ I worked for the National Basketball Association for a little bit, and I said, ‘If I can’t love accounting doing this, I’m never gonna love it.’

I had tutored students with disabilities at Bronx Community College, and I really liked the connection [we had]. And so I’m going home on the train one day, and I saw [a sign] that said, ‘Do you remember your first grade teacher’s name? Who will remember yours?’ It was the New York City Teaching Fellows Program. I went home, applied the same day, and I was in the classroom probably three months or four months later.

One of the biggest challenges facing the education department right now is declining enrollment and the growing number of really small schools. You obviously have some experience as a superintendent pursuing school mergers, so I’m wondering how you’re starting to think about that systemwide. Is there a threshold below which you think a school is too small to be sustainable?

What decides for me whether a school is too small is the resources that it’s able to garner for kids. And there are schools across the city that aren’t able to have the best enrichment programs. An eighth grader might not be exposed to Algebra because they don’t have the resources. That is something we have to take a look at across the city, especially when we think about our class size mandates.

And I don’t think of class size as a mandate. I think of class size as an opportunity to meet the needs of every student in the classroom. We have to use the fact that we’re in this cycle of lower enrollment as an opportunity to think about how we utilize different spaces.

You’ve also talked about wanting to prioritize school integration. What kinds of integration efforts might you be interested in pursuing?

I really believe that a school that’s socioeconomically integrated — especially as we think about our city and the diversity that it brings culturally — is a school that I want my own children, who are in the public school system, to be a part of.

I remember my first parent-teacher conference when I realized I had the cab driver’s kids, the police detective’s kids, the home health aide’s kids. It hit me that all these people want the best for their kids, and it was my job to really make sure that their kids were seen and heard. And I think that’s the part of school integration that people often miss: We want to make sure that we have high expectations for all kids, and we want to make sure that they feel affirmed in school.

A larger share of New York City middle and high schools screen students for admission than almost any other school system in the country. Will you be looking at ways to reduce screening?

There are fewer screened schools today than they were prior to the pandemic — and the way that we’re doing screens today is different. Instead of focusing on test scores, like we used to do, we’re now focused on academic report card grades. If we’re going to do screens, [course grades are] more aligned to what I would want to support.

When we look at [District 3] where I was a superintendent, we didn’t bring screens back wholesale, except for our citywide [gifted] program under the Anderson School. It was because that was a community-driven process that I listened to folks. Not everybody was in favor of it, but certainly there was a majority of parents in favor of that, and we moved in that direction.

We’re going to continue to listen to parents. If there are places where people don’t necessarily want to do that, then we’ll listen.

New York City’s lowest performing students have been struggling to recover from the pandemic. Do you have ideas about how specifically the system should better support those students? What about schools serving mostly students below grade level?

We have invested incredibly in New York City Reads. And a part of New York City Reads is this idea of MTSS [multi-tiered system of supports], which I know is confusing for folks. What is that? It’s essentially a structure that makes sure every child gets what they need when it’s implemented well, and that during the school day. So during the school day we’ve been clearer than ever on what interventions mean, when we do them, how we create time to do them.

We’ve done so much work around that during the school day. Some schools do great work with high dosage tutoring and we’re going to have to continue that. The one thing I do think gets in the way of all of this is chronic absenteeism.

And so since the pandemic, no matter your demographics, what we’ve noticed is that you’re likely to come into school fewer days than before. And folks need to understand that if we’re not in school your child is going to miss work. I’m doing a lot of thinking about different ways to address chronic absenteeism.

During the campaign, Mayor Mamdani indicated that charter schools siphon resources away from traditional public schools, shouldn’t have space in city buildings, and also should be audited. Do you agree with that position?

Kamar Samuels believes in a great school, no matter what kind of school it is. I know there are some charter schools that do really, really good work. I think charter schools will continue to do that work, and I know that they can do that work within the cap that they have.

And I do believe that there are charter schools, like some district schools, that may not be doing as well as we want them to do, and I think those schools should be held accountable.

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

NYC parent coordinators: Mamdani says he’ll change your role. We want to hear from you.

2026-01-07T22:03:36+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

The day before his inauguration, New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, said that he wants to “improve the parent coordinator role to be a meaningful organizer of parents, rather than an administrative coordinator reporting to a principal.”

Parent coordinators play many essential roles in their school communities, from welcome committee to tech support to de facto social worker. Historically, some parent coordinators have called on the city to give them better training and a clearer job description. Many have said that they feel undervalued and underpaid.

Chalkbeat wants to hear from parent coordinators: How do you see your role now? What do you think of Mamdani’s goal? What do you want the new mayor to know about your job?

Help us understand by taking our survey.

Loading…

If you are having trouble viewing this form, go here.

Kamar Samuels says NYC will double down on literacy mandate — but signals changes to math overhaul

2026-01-06T22:05:29+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

A reading curriculum overhaul launched by Mayor Eric Adams isn’t going anywhere, schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels told principals Tuesday. But he signaled changes could be coming to the prior administration’s math mandate.

“I completely believe in academic rigor and excellence — that’s why we are doubling down on what we’re doing with New York City Reads,” Samuels told principals during a Tuesday morning webinar, according to a recording obtained by Chalkbeat.

“We’re going to probably take a little bit of a different approach to New York City Solves, so you might see some shifts there,” Samuels said of the math mandate. Neither Samuels nor an Education Department spokesperson elaborated on what changes he is considering.

Under Adams, the city required all elementary schools to adopt one of three approved literacy curriculums. The program, known as NYC Reads, marked a major shakeup for a system that has long given principals freedom to choose what materials their schools use. Meanwhile, high schools had to adopt a standardized Algebra 1 curriculum, and a growing number of middle schools have been required to use new math programs, too.

Samuels’ comments indicate that key pieces of Adams’ education agenda will continue despite the transition between mayoral administrations — echoing sentiments shared by Mayor Zohran Mamdani on the campaign trail. The new schools chief also told high school principals “not to worry” about the fate of another key Adams initiative that created new career education pathways at over 130 schools, known as FutureReadyNYC.

That may be a relief to some school leaders who often fear promising programs could be discarded when the city’s political leadership changes. Still, Samuels indicated he is willing to make changes to the city’s math mandate, which has proved less popular with many educators and school leaders.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said he is encouraged that Samuels is taking a closer look at the math program. Some educators have raised concerns that the Illustrative Math curriculum, which emphasizes open-ended activities and discussion, is not in sync with the state’s exit exams that are currently required for graduation. The program’s critics say it can be a struggle for students who are behind or don’t have enough background knowledge in the subject.

The union leader said many teachers appreciate the curriculum’s approach but are frustrated with some of the implementation challenges. Mulgrew praised Samuels as a “practical” leader who could help troubleshoot. “He’s an educator — he gets the fact that you can’t start the first unit with something children have no baseline knowledge of,” Mulgrew said.

Samuels also praised some of the prior administration’s efforts to ramp up assessments to identify children who are struggling and standardize how schools help them catch up. For the first time this school year, all of the city’s public schools must pick from a list of approved programs to help students who are behind.

“Our most vulnerable students need to learn how to read,” Samuels said. “That is our number one goal.”

Samuels has also recently touted his own record on literacy. As superintendent of Manhattan’s District 3, Samuels presided over an increase in reading scores. Scores in his district climbed just over 3 percentage points last year, to 67.4% proficiency, after implementing a new reading curriculum. Citywide, about 56% of students were considered proficient last year, a roughly 7 percentage point increase, matching the gains statewide.

In his address to principals, Samuels reiterated his commitment to school safety and integration, an idea he said should go beyond shifting classroom demographics and focus on culturally responsive teaching.

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

NYC schools chief Kamar Samuels signals integration, culturally responsive education as priorities

2026-01-05T22:26:25+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

In a letter to Education Department staff on Monday, New York City schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels began sketching out some of his priorities, including school integration and lessons that reflect the system’s diversity.

“I believe that every student — starting in early childhood and continuing through graduation — deserves a school that is academically rigorous, safe, and truly integrated,” Samuels wrote in the letter obtained by Chalkbeat.

Families, he added, “should be able to expect that our system reflects New York City’s rich multiculturalism, both through the diversity of our schools and through culturally responsive curriculum and practice.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani did not campaign on a detailed education agenda, but he cited school integration as one of his goals — an issue former Mayor Eric Adams largely sidestepped. It remains to be seen how Samuels may approach diversifying one of the nation’s most segregated school systems. As a local superintendent, he pursued mergers and admissions policy changes with an eye toward integration.

In recent years, city officials have rolled out lessons that focus on historically marginalized groups — from the global African diaspora to LGBTQ communities. Samuels’ letter suggests he is interested in building on that work.

When Samuels led Brooklyn’s District 13, he worked with school communities to phase out gifted and talented programs and led an effort to bring the International Baccalaureate curriculum to schools across the district. Mamdani has also pledged to scale back gifted programming for the city’s youngest students.

In his Monday letter to school staffers, Samuels emphasized the importance of having “high expectations” and “high-quality learning,” while also noting the importance of foundational literacy skills and “class sizes that allow educators to meet students’ needs.”

Samuels indicated he will take community input seriously. On the campaign trail, Mamdani promised to end mayoral control of the city’s schools, arguing the system has not been responsive enough to community voices. He reversed that position last week, though the mayor has promised to come up with new ways to strengthen community input.

“I also believe deeply in transparency, accountability, and meaningful engagement,” Samuels wrote. “Our work will be strongest when educators, families, and students know their voices are heard — not symbolically, but in practice.”

The new schools chancellor began his first official school day at P.S./M.S. 194 in the Bronx, the campus where he got his start in the city’s school system in 2001 as a sixth grade math teacher. He met with educators, students, and parent leaders, according to an Education Department spokesperson. (The visit was not open to the press.)

Samuels also emphasized in his letter that he has a personal stake in the system. Two of his children — a first grader and an 11th grader — are New York City public school students, while his youngest is not yet school-age.

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

Zohran Mamdani to tap Superintendent Kamar Samuels as NYC schools chancellor

2025-12-31T01:51:01+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is expected to tap Kamar Samuels, a Manhattan superintendent, to run New York City’s public school system, according to a transition committee member briefed by administration officials.

As the superintendent of Manhattan’s District 3, Samuels supervises schools with widely varying demographic profiles across the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights, and parts of Harlem. Samuels has led school integration plans and played a role in a previous effort to scale back gifted programs, initiatives that Mamdani has vowed to revive.

Samuels also has experience executing school mergers — a task that is often complex and controversial — which could be valuable as the city grapples with a growing number of tiny campuses. Those mergers, however, have tended to have an explicit integration focus in what is one of the nation’s most segregated school systems.

Before his tenure in District 3, where he oversaw several mergers, Samuels was the superintendent in Brooklyn’s District 13, which spans from Brooklyn Heights to Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and parts of Bedford-Stuyvesant. While there, he oversaw the move of Arts & Letters, a coveted pre-K-8 school, from its home in Clinton Hill to an underenrolled school building in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

He also spearheaded that district’s move away from gifted and talented programs — amid growing concerns from parents about racial disparities — and laid the groundwork to move toward implementing International Baccalaureate programs districtwide. The International Baccalaureate is recognized globally as a rigorous program, and District 13 aimed to use it to create a more inclusive schoolwide approach to enrichment as an alternative to gifted education, serving only a select group of students.

Samuels started out as a teacher in the Bronx nearly two decades ago before becoming a principal at the Bronx Writing Academy, or P.S. 323, where he took advantage of a teachers union program allowing schools to experiment beyond the confines of the contract: he staggered start times for teachers, adjusted class lengths, and incorporated online learning through a city program known as iZone, which paid for the school’s new computers.

His expected appointment was first reported by City & State.

He will face a series of challenges as New York City’s schools chief. As enrollment in public schools has plunged, the incoming administration will have to answer difficult questions about whether to close or merge more schools. Rates of chronic absenteeism, which skyrocketed during the pandemic, remain elevated. A state class size mandate will require finding thousands of new teachers and billions of dollars. Though reading and math scores have ticked up on state assessments, the city’s performance is widely considered middling given the agency’s nearly $43 billion budget — and there are wide gaps that cleave along lines of race and class.

Perhaps the trickiest task for the incoming chancellor will be managing one of Mamdani’s most significant education promises: to end mayoral control of the nation’s largest school system and give families and educators more of a say.

Mamdani has yet to outline how he would give up some of his own power over the school system, but it’s possible those moves would dilute the schools chief’s authority.

Some education observers were quick to praise Mamdani’s decision to elevate Samuels.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, a journalist who has written extensively about inequity in New York City schools, praised the move on social media as “outstanding news for those who still care about school integration and equality.” She added: “In the face of the national attacks on civil rights and dismantling of enforcement at the U.S. DOE this pick by Mamdani sends a powerful message.”

Others who have worked directly with Samuels said he is known for navigating thorny debates about inequity in the system and incorporating feedback from parents and other community members.

“He is savvy and respected,” said David Adams, the CEO of Urban Assembly, which supports a network of New York City public schools. The decision “reflects a mayor who is looking for a chancellor who knows how to operate within the system.”

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.

Pay teachers more, 311 for parents, move district boundaries: How Mamdani could improve NYC schools

2025-12-22T19:45:10+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Zohran Mamdani will take the reins of the nation’s largest school system on Jan. 1, inheriting some big challenges facing the $43 billion agency with roughly 150,000 staff and nearly 900,000 students.

Chronic absenteeism remains high, major gaps persist in reading and math proficiency, and enrollment continues to shrink.

On the campaign trail, Mamdani did not focus intently on schools, but he made one big education promise: to govern the city’s public schools with more input from New Yorkers and reduce his own power over the system.

Chalkbeat asked dozens of experts, students, parents, educators, and nonprofit leaders to share bold ideas for the incoming mayor to consider as he crafts an agenda for New York City’s public schools. This is the second installment of a two-part series. Check out Part 1.

Here are some of the most thought-provoking responses we received. They have been edited for length and clarity.

NeQuan C. McLean

Community Education Council president, District 16, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn

Redraw local school district boundaries

NeQuan McLean

New York City cannot solve its enrollment crisis with school maps drawn for a different era. City Council districts are redrawn every 10 years, but our community school district lines have not had a true citywide review since the 1970s. Some districts now sprawl across dozens of schools, while others are too small to sustain strong programs. I propose a mayor-backed School District Redistricting Commission, with real community voice, to design a fairer map that stabilizes enrollment, expands access to programs, and keeps neighborhood schools viable.

Evan Stone

CEO, Educators for Excellence

Launch 311 service to answer parent questions

Evan Stone, CEO, Educators for Excellence

There is an opportunity to rethink the relationships with families across the system by increasing decision making, engagement, and transparency.

First, I think the system should rethink and relaunch the parent university to tie into the work of parent ambassadors. Use the program to engage families in the massive curriculum shifts that are underway and set them up to support their students at home (trainings run by teachers). Launch a 311 for schools to answer parent questions (especially around enrollment). Next, I think they should move to mobile voting to increase parent engagement in Community Education Council elections and have the parent representatives on the Panel for Educational Policy elected through a direct election. And finally, I think they should give local parent councils a real budget to run participatory processes to invest in their districts aligned with citywide priorities.

Crystal Lane

Chief education officer, DREAM Charter Schools

Extend student advising after graduation

Crystal Lane, Chief education officer of DREAM Charter Schools.

Measure success by who our alumni become at 24, not test scores at 10. High school graduation shouldn’t mean goodbye. Assign every graduate a dedicated advisor who checks in monthly through age 24, helping navigate financial aid renewals, job applications, housing issues, or just life in New York. Think Big Brothers Big Sisters, but citywide and mandatory.

Today, schools are buried in annual metrics instead of preparing young people to thrive in college, career, and life.

Rebecca Bailin

Executive director of New Yorkers United for Child Care

Rebecca Bailin

Universal child care for NYC’s 2-year-olds

The first step toward making our city an affordable place for families is 2-Care for All, aging down 3-K and Pre-K to 2 year-olds and saving parents $20,000 a year. 2-Care must start with neighborhoods with the highest rates of child poverty and scale up from there to provide full-day, year-round care across the city. We are thrilled that Mayor-elect Mamdani has committed to implementing universal child care, and look forward to working with his Administration to make 2-Care for All a reality as soon as possible. Families cannot afford to wait any longer.

Mashfiq Ahmed

Teacher, John Dewey High School

Pay teachers more

Mashfiq Ahmed

New York City needs to confront teacher burnout and end its reliance on their unpaid labor. Many teachers are taking their work home with them or staying late at school lesson planning, designing curriculum, and doing family outreach. Our underpaid and overworked educators are holding up an underfunded system, especially in schools that serve marginalized communities. Real equity under our city’s new administration requires reinvesting public money directly back into the workers who make public education possible. The next administration should help fund more prep time, reduce class sizes, and provide salaries that accurately reflect the value of teacher’s labor. For a starting salary, teachers should earn about $90,000 a year.

Yiatin Chu

Co-president of Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education and Stuyvesant High School parent

Create classroom dashboard for parents

Yiatin Chu

Empower every public school parent by giving us a dashboard displaying class-specific information like teacher resume, average funding per student, class size, textbooks/curriculum, standardized scores of students from previous years, cohort data (e.g., suspensions, attendance, iReady results). True partnership requires transparency — an informed parent is the most powerful advocate for their child.

Adam Schwartz

English as a new language teacher, Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School

Equip schools with a basic English curriculum for newcomers

Adam Schwartz

NYC is a city of immigrants. The city created the We Speak NYC curriculum to help adult newcomer immigrants learn to communicate in basic English. New York City Public Schools should do the same for their children. Academic English development is central to city and state education policy. But newcomer English language learners need to learn to communicate in basic English. Schools are on their own to purchase or create these curricula, with little guidance or support. This hidden burden falls on teachers. Newcomer ELLs deserve a basic English curriculum centered around their lives in a city of immigrants, as do their hardworking teachers.

Nyah Berg

Executive director, New York Appleseed

Establish a deputy chancellor for school integration

Nyah Berg

Such a role would provide the leadership and accountability needed to implement and evaluate the nearly 100 existing School Diversity Advisory Group recommendations for creating equitable, integrated, and inclusive schools. Continuous segregation is costly for students and families, economically and socially, while integration is a proven affordability strategy that expands opportunity and strengthens school communities. A dedicated senior leadership post ensures that addressing school segregation is not an afterthought but a guiding goal across the public school system.

David Banks

Former chancellor, New York City Department of Education

Double down on reading curriculum overhaul

New York Chancellor, David C. Banks, poses for a portrait.

I think [Mamdani] needs to be on the record as he’s going to double, triple down on NYC Reads. We have we re-engineered the school system, re-trained all the teachers. We did it in close partnership with the UFT [teachers union] and the CSA [principals union]. It checks all the boxes. I think NYC Solves needs a bit more work, but NYC Reads is absolutely on the right track.

Camilla Spillmann

Student, West End Secondary School

End the funding boost for specialized high schools

Camilla Spillmann, student at West End Secondary School

Specialized high schools have huge alumni donor pools, and they also get extra funding due to the Fair Student Funding formula. These schools may have unique needs for their programs, and it’s undeniable that the students who are there have worked hard to be there, but it feels unfair to give the extra to schools that would have easier avenues to getting outside funds. We should address this discrepancy.

Joel Rose

CEO, New Classrooms Innovation Partners

Rethink how classrooms fundamentally operate

Joel Rose

New York City should position itself as a global leader in designing the classroom of the future. Today’s classrooms were built for a different era — fixed schedules, one-size-fits-all pacing, and disconnected tools that make it hard for teachers to meet the wide range of student needs. The next mayor should launch a major R&D effort within the DOE to pilot new models that integrate modern technology, flexible time structures, real-time diagnostics, and personalized learning tools. By treating innovation as a core function — not an afterthought — NYC can build classrooms that reflect how students actually learn and how teachers can most effectively teach.

Keri Goldberg

Kindergarten and first grade teacher, P.S. 321 Brooklyn

Create new apprenticeship programs for teachers

Keri Goldberg

It takes time to learn the craft of teaching but it’s nearly impossible to be a student teacher in New York City. Develop a paid apprenticeship program (in collaboration with teacher colleges) that supports aspiring teachers by partnering them with master teachers for two years. In the first year, the apprentice teacher works full-time in the master teacher’s classroom and in the second year the master teacher continues to serve as a mentor and collaborator. These partnerships would help lower teacher-student ratios without a need for additional space or admissions caps to comply with the reduced class size mandate; put new teachers on a path to success; and tap the knowledge of accomplished practitioners. Offer apprentice teachers subsidized housing, too!

Mateo Tang Oreilly

Student, Central Park East High School

Prioritize cultural studies

Mateo Tang Oreilly, student at Central Park East High School

I feel like there is not enough in place in our schools that either keep students connected to their culture, or connect students to new cultures. Our city is a melting pot of all different kinds of people, but I have seen our education system become the cause of assimilation, and loss of cultural knowledge and identity.

Nancy Bedard

Education senior staff attorney, Brooklyn Legal Services

Guarantee access to arts education

Nancy Bedard

I was born and raised in NYC, and my two older sisters had access to arts education. They had sewing machines, pottery wheels, musical instruments. By the time I entered school, these resources were removed. Mamdani should guarantee that the Education Department fully and equitably funds arts education to meet state-mandated requirements in every local school district. Recent figures show 69% of NYC eighth grade students could not meet the state Education Department’s arts requirements due to inadequate arts education resources. The majority of these students are children of color in low-income districts. Arts education motivates children to attend school, improves grades, reduces suspensions, and is therapeutic.

Arthur Samuels

Founder & executive director, MESA Charter High Schools

Rethink teacher certification rules

Arthur Samuels

If you’re trying to attract young teachers from other states, which we should want to do, we need to streamline the process of granting certification for teachers who cross state lines. With the class-size law now in force, Mayor Mamdani should partner with the State Education Department to remove unnecessary barriers. In general, New York’s byzantine teacher-certification rules block many aspiring teachers — especially lower-income candidates and people of color — without clear evidence that those rules improve teacher quality. For a district where most students are kids of color, that means missing out on the diverse educators that research shows strengthens student outcomes.

Liz Accles

Executive director, Community Food Advocates

Better wages for school cafeteria workers

Liz Accles

Elevate school meals as a highly valued part of public education by investing in the workforce to fully reflect their vital role in school communities.

NYC’s program serves 850,000 culturally affirming, high-quality meals daily — an extraordinary effort. These nutritious meals are essential to student well-being and learning. To sustain and advance this progress, NYC must treat school food professionals as key educational partners, with competitive wages, clear career paths, and robust professional development. Strengthening recruitment and retention will improve food quality, dining environments, and menu innovation, ensuring school meals are valued as foundational to learning and healthy school communities.

Vanessa Leung

Co-executive director, Coalition for Asian American Children and Families

Collect better ethnicity and language data

Vanessa Leung

Mamdani must commit to collecting detailed, disaggregated ethnicity and language data on students so that every student is seen and supported. Students who hail from places as different as Bangladesh and Vietnam are currently grouped under the same “Asian and Pacific Islander” umbrella by the Department of Education. Data that treats our communities — nearly 1 in 5 students — as a monolith erases our diversity and renders our differing challenges invisible. Better data can help align communities facing similar challenges to inform consistent policies towards integration and more inclusive admissions practices.

Rafiq R. Kalam Id-Din II

Founder and managing partner, Ember Charter School for Mindful Education, Innovation and Transformation

Lift the cap on charter schools

Rafiq R. Kalam

We must end the divisive narrative that pits charter vs. traditional public schools. Instead, we need to double down on offering families a wide variety of public choices, particularly high-quality and equity-focused charter schools, some of the most successful and innovative public schools in the country. We should equalize funding and double the number of these public schools — expanding their reach to help meet the demand for universal child care.

Abby Loomis

Second grade teacher, Brooklyn Arbor Elementary School

Make schools greener — and healthier

Abby Loomis

I can’t wait to see Mayor Mamdani follow up on his plan for green and healthy schools. This means upgrading school buildings by improving ventilation (which will improve student health and attendance), installing rooftop or school yard solar, and investing in green spaces that will mitigate flooding and rising temperatures, while also allowing kids to play and move! Also, let’s chill on the AI, please.

Christopher Emdin

Professor of science education, Teachers College

Focus on culture and community

Christopher Emdin

Learning should be rooted in neighborhoods and driven by real projects that matter to young people and communities. Culture is not an add on. Hip hop has to be centered as a core literacy, a science practice, and a civic language. Schools should partner with artists, libraries, museums, parks, and maker spaces. Teachers should be supported as researchers with time to build alongside students. End test centered schooling and zero tolerance discipline. Invest in restorative justice, wellness, and joy. Measure success by relevance, creativity, and community impact. When schools reflect the culture of the city, young people do not just succeed, they lead.

Cheri Fancsali

Executive director, Research Alliance for NYC Schools at NYU

Invest in programs that already work

Cheri Fanscali

The boldest move? Commit to the long game — and change course when necessary. It is easy to fall into the trap of chasing the next shiny thing. Instead, city leaders should sustain what works: high-dosage tutoring, career-connected learning, small learning communities, community schools, evidence-based literacy and math instruction, culturally responsive pedagogy, leveraging robust cross-agency collaboration, and professional learning communities for educators. Too often, effective or promising programs are abandoned before they can reach scale or show impact.

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

Tutoring, campus mergers, affordable housing for teachers: How Mamdani could improve NYC schools

2025-12-19T19:36:28+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Chronic absenteeism remains high, major gaps persist in reading and math proficiency, and enrollment continues to shrink.

Chalkbeat asked dozens of experts, students, parents, educators, and nonprofit leaders to share bold ideas for the incoming mayor to consider as he crafts an agenda for New York City’s public schools. This is the first installment of a two-part series. Check out Part 2.

Here are some of the most thought-provoking responses we received. They have been edited for length and clarity.

Shael Polakow-Suransky

President, Bank Street College of Education

Reimagine high school with yearlong capstone project

Shael Polakow-Suransky

The sunsetting of Regents exams is a once-in-a-generation chance to reimagine high school. Instead of wasting months on test prep, let’s replace 12th-grade seat time with a yearlong “city capstone.” All seniors would pursue either deep civic action projects or apprenticeships in high-growth sectors like green energy and health care. This is a long-term affordability strategy: By connecting students to professional networks and skilled careers, we arm them with the future earning power to pay rent and remain in the boroughs they call home. Let’s stop asking our youth to bubble in answers, and empower them to build the city they deserve.

Rashid Ferrod Davis

Founding principal, Pathways in Technology Early College High School

Pair every school with an industry partner

Rashid Davis

My bold proposal for improving public education in New York City is for all schools to have at least one industry partner. Not all employers can offer extensive internships immediately. Examples of initial, smaller commitments include hosting guest speaking events, conducting resume workshops, or offering workplace tours.

Kevin Dahill-Fuchel

Executive director, Counseling In Schools

Include social and emotional well-being on student report cards

Kevin Dahill-Fuchel

My proposal is simple yet profound: Expand the current “report cards” of each student’s social and emotional well-being beyond pre-K and kindergarten, all the way through high school. Currently, once students move to first grade, they join an academic race that ignores character and individual talents. Imagine if every student was systematically recognized for non-academic qualities such as being friendly, helpful, fun, hardworking, respected, lively, and reflective. Not only would they be valued and nurtured as a complete person, but they would also have a better chance at academic success because their social and emotional foundation would be stronger.

Lisa Margosian

Chief executive officer, Achievement First Public Charter Schools

Increase affordable housing for teachers

Lisa Margosian

In New York City, only about 20% of rentals are affordable to teachers — a crisis for a city that relies on strong pre-K through 12 public schools. If we want excellent teachers in every classroom, and a workforce that reflects the backgrounds of our students, we must make it possible for teachers to live here. New York needs a citywide effort to build dedicated, mixed-income housing for teachers and cap rent at 30% of income. This practical step would make teaching sustainable, improve recruitment and retention, and give students the stability and high-quality instruction they deserve.

Rodney Lee

Parent of two children from District 1, an elected Community Education Council representative, and a nonprofit administrator

Support schools to address bullying

Rodney Lee

We need a curriculum to create a culture of accountability and kindness. I remember how much my daughter wanted to meet new friends in middle school. This quickly diminished as she became a victim of ridicule for trying to participate in class. She was kicked, threatened, and ultimately there were over 20 documented incidents or bullying during sixth and seventh grade that resulted in my demoralized, self-esteem-shattered baby girl to transfer to a new school for eighth grade. It was frustrating to learn that victims of bullying were encouraged to transfer as the aggressors were harder to transfer or deal with. We need to change this practice.

Sharon Collins

Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching recipient and STEAM coordinator at New Heights Academy Charter School

Sharon Ann Collins

Put teachers on school boards

Our best education advocates are our classroom teachers, and yet they are not at the decision-making table. Put teacher representatives on the Panel for Educational Policy, Citywide Council on High Schools, and Community Education Councils as advisors. There, teachers can share their perspective and insights into curriculum, AI and technological tools, class size, standardized testing, how the budget truly should be spent to really impact student trajectories, and educational innovations that would revolutionize education for our NYC students.

Katie Pace Miles

Brooklyn College professor and founder of The Reading Institute

Intensive tutoring for all who need it

Brooklyn College Professor Katie Pace Miles

Equitable high-impact tutoring can radically change outcomes for students who are behind grade level. Privileged families hire tutors when their child needs academic support. An equitable public school system should ensure that all students who need additional one-on-one support to develop their literacy and math skills are afforded one. Research has shown that when high-impact tutoring is provided, meaning that it occurs 3-5 times a week using evidence-based programs, students behind benchmarks are able to catch up to grade-level expectations. Ensuring all students in our public schools have access to this type of support benefits schools, students, and families.

Arlen Benjamin-Gomez

Executive director at EdTrust-New York

Arlen Benjamin-Gomez

Require every district to create a local integration plan

Diversifying schools is one of the few proven strategies to improve outcomes for all students, and solutions already exist. District 15’s equitable middle-school lottery reduced economic segregation by 55% and racial segregation by 38% in just one year. We should expand these admissions models, publicly report segregation data, and require every district to develop an integration plan.

Crystal Rodriguez

Bronx District 8 Community Education Council president

Crystal Rodriguez

Mediation hubs for parents and educators to collaboratively solve problems

New York City needs a Family Accountability & Restorative Engagement Hub in every district. It would be a city-funded space where parents, students, and educators collaborate on problem-solving before issues escalate — such issues as bullying, chronic absenteeism, special education concerns, parent-leader mediations, parent-teacher mediations. These hubs would standardize restorative practices, ensure compliance with Chancellor’s regulations, provide trauma-informed support, and give families real decision-making power rather than symbolic roles.

Ray Domanico

Senior fellow, Manhattan Institute

Tackle underenrolled schools with mergers

Ray Domanico

Declining birth rates in the city have resulted in far fewer students enrolled in the city’s traditional public schools, a trend that will continue for the foreseeable future. The new team in city hall should act boldly to adjust the system’s resources to its lower enrollments. This must be done strategically by consolidating underenrolled schools into larger schools with stronger leadership and programmatic offerings. Vacated school buildings should be used either to support communities with other needed services or sold to be converted into affordable housing for their communities. This is an opportunity to address both school quality and affordability issues.

Leonie Haimson

Executive director, Class Size Matters

Leonie Haimson

Create moratorium on AI in classrooms

Mamdani should enact a two-year moratorium on the use of AI in the classroom, and hold town hall meetings to hear from parents, teachers, and students as to how its rushed adoption risks undermining privacy, the environment, student cognitive growth and creativity, and the human connection central to a quality education.

David Adams

Chief executive officer, The Urban Assembly

Hold schools accountable for growth, not just test scores

David Adams, Chief executive officer of the Urban Assembly.

NYC schools need an accountability system that rewards progress and makes innovation easier, not riskier. The Mamdani administration can improve public schools by elevating school impact scores that communicate student growth, not just performance. This will incentivize schools to solve problems, give parents the school quality information they deserve, and spur competition on the metrics that matter. When schools demonstrate outsized gains, the system should rapidly scale their practice, while increasing flexibility, freeing leaders to focus on innovating and problem-solving.

Accountability should be a runway for excellence, not a cage for compliance. Make things work, and scale those solutions.

Mathew Moura

Senior Vice President of Strategy, Teaching Matters

Give every teacher a coach of their choice

Mathew Moura

Let’s give every teacher coaches they can select in partnership with principals and districts to create coherent professional development, tailored to their needs, with the resources required to be able to help all kids. Every kid has the right to a good teacher. Every teacher has the right to be supported to become one.

Rachel Sabella

Director, No Kid Hungry New York

Treat schools as nutrition hubs

Rachel Sabella

NYC schools are well-situated to address the growing hunger crisis. They’re already connected to nearly a million students and their families, and they have infrastructure in place to help them tackle the issue. The incoming administration should increase the number of school pantries, provide in-school resources to help families apply for SNAP and other benefits, and maximize the reach of existing school meal programs. By strengthening our school meal programs and thinking creatively about summer meals, our next mayor can get the whole school community involved in keeping kids and families fed all year long.

Diane Ravitch

Education leader and author

Diane Ravitch

Expand ‘community schools’ that provide wraparound support

Mamdani can’t do everything to fix education but he can pursue one powerful idea: community schools.

Instead of promoting school choice, which destabilizes neighborhoods and does not improve education, the mayor should commit to expand community schools.

These are schools with wraparound services where children can get medical screening, vision testing, and dental care. Where students can count on getting breakfast, lunch, even dinner. Where parents can meet school personnel who can help them connect to city services, access health care, and find employment resources.

Public schools can be great again if they meet the needs of their communities.

Jeremiah Dickerson

Student at Williamsburg Charter High School

Improve school food

Jeremiah Dickerson

As a student in NYC, I constantly hear classmates complaining about the meals we’re expected to just pick up and eat, and I’m no stranger to that experience myself. Too often, I walk into school, see breakfast laid out, and turn right back around after being greeted with a dry, rubbery egg sandwich. Students deserve better. Why not offer simple, healthier options like yogurt with fresh fruit, whole-grain bagels with cream cheese, oatmeal, breakfast burritos with eggs and veggies, or even warm pancakes and turkey sausage? Our city claims to champion nutritional value, but that support should start with serving real, nutritious food.

Lori Podvesker

Director of disability and education policy, INCLUDEnyc

Better integrate students with disabilities

Lori Podvesker

NYC can reduce disability segregation by training general education teachers and administrators on inclusive practices/supports, behavior management, and federal and state laws, fully utilizing the special education continuum so more students receive special education services in general education classrooms, restructuring District 75 for collaboration, ensuring equal access to opportunities, citywide initiatives, schedules, and same after-school and summer programming as their general education peers, addressing systemic issues like busing and the need to support paraprofessionals better, develop mechanisms and tools to access schools on the extent their students with IEPs are with general education students, and focusing on integrated learning in the least restrictive environment as required by law.

Liz Pitofsky

Founder, Service Learning Project

Make sure all schools have active student councils

Liz Pitofsky

Public schools were founded to create engaged citizens: let’s get back to that original goal by engaging all K-12 youth in problem-solving about their schools and neighborhoods. When children and teens are given opportunities to make their voices heard, they see themselves as leaders with the critical responsibilities of citizenship. This not only benefits them- it strengthens our schools, our city, and our democracy. Mamdani should make it a priority for all NYC schools to have student councils that meet regularly with administrators, as well as social studies classes that integrate youth-led community problem-solving.

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

New city and state bills target lack of transparency in suspensions of students with disabilities

2025-12-17T19:45:37+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

New York City lawmakers are scheduled to vote Thursday on a bill that would force the Education Department to disclose detailed statistics about long-term suspensions of students with disabilities.

A similar bill was recently introduced in the state legislature and would apply to districts across New York.

The flurry of legislation comes after a Chalkbeat investigation found that New York City’s public schools have for years flouted rules designed to protect students with disabilities from lengthy classroom removals.

Under federal law, students with disabilities may not be suspended for more than 10 days if the conduct in question was directly related to their disability or stemmed from the school district’s failure to provide special education services. Schools are required to conduct meetings known as manifestation determination reviews to assess whether either of those criteria are met. If so, the student should immediately return to school, and officials must conduct a behavior assessment.

But the city’s public schools have long failed to consider a student’s disability and how it relates to the suspension, according to a Chalkbeat review of hundreds of pages of special education records, reports from independent monitors, and interviews with dozens of families, advocates, and educators. As a result, some students have served suspensions for weeks longer than allowed.

Last school year, New York City students with disabilities were removed or suspended from their classrooms nearly 14,800 times — representing 41% of all removals, even as those with disabilities only represent 22% of the student body. Black students are also disproportionately suspended, representing 38% of all removals last year and just 19% of city students. (Suspensions ticked down about 2% last year overall, with a larger decline among longer-term punishments.)

In 1,550 cases last school year, students with disabilities were removed from their classrooms long enough to trigger the review process to assess if their conduct was connected to their disability or the school’s failure to provide services, Education Department officials said at an October City Council hearing. In about 23% of those review meetings, schools found that the suspension was due to the student’s disability or a failure to implement their learning plan.

Schools were more likely to find that white students’ behavior was related to their disability compared with their Black or Latino peers, Chalkbeat’s investigation found. (City officials declined to release a demographic breakdown of suspension reviews for last school year.)

Lawmakers say bills would hold school districts accountable

The legislation, which several advocates said would represent a significant step forward, aims to shed light on a process that has not received much public examination. Many school districts across the state, including New York City, do not regularly report suspension review outcomes or even how often they are conducted. The city and state legislation would require districts to disclose those figures every year.

“New York lacks comprehensive, disaggregated data to identify systemic issues or disparities,” said Assembly member Yudelka Tapia, who sponsored the state bill and represents parts of the Bronx.

Suspensions in New York City are typically capped at 20 days, so when students prevail during the suspension review process, they may return to class days or a couple weeks sooner. But in districts across the state, suspensions are allowed to last up to an entire school year, meaning the stakes of the suspension reviews can be high.

The City Council bill, sponsored by Rita Joseph, is scheduled for a vote in the council’s education committee on Thursday and could proceed to a vote by the full council later that day. If it becomes law, the Education Department would also be required to report how often parents are informed of the review meeting and if they are conducted within the required timeframe.

“The main goal right now is to make sure that we have data that will support the future advocacy,” Joseph said, adding that it would help protect the rights of students with disabilities.

Because New York City schools are typically responsible for reviewing their own suspensions, advocates contend that the review process is stacked against families. But since lengthy punishments are usually reserved for the most severe misconduct, school staff frequently say that removing students is important for maintaining a safe learning environment for others.

Families often don’t know their rights at the suspension review meetings, including that they can bring a legal advocate. The city and state legislation would require more detailed reporting on whether families and their advocates are present at those meetings.

The city Education Department updated the materials for families about the suspension review process, explicitly stating that they have the right to bring an advocate and offering a list of potential advocates, a spokesperson said. City officials have also convened focus groups about the process and are updating training materials for school staff.

Some groups that have represented families at suspension review meetings cheered the legislation because it has been difficult to obtain basic statistics about the process.

Michaela Shuchman, a lawyer at Legal Services NYC, said her organization has submitted public records requests to large districts across the state about the suspension review meetings, and several said they don’t collect information. She has been waiting more than a year for a slew of suspension records from New York City’s Education Department, which often drags out public records requests.

“We don’t know what we don’t know, which is why these bills are so important,” Shuchman said. “We need this information to figure out where the gaps are and where we’re falling short.”

City Education Department officials said they support the city legislation and are reviewing the state bill.

“We have to have this transparency,” said Andie Corso, a city special education official, at the October hearing. “The public deserves this information and it will help us do better.”

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

‘Science of reading’ 101: Free course for NYC teachers helps unpack latest literacy research

2025-12-10T22:33:41+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Mayor Eric Adams’ shakeup to elementary school reading curriculums had a clear goal: to align instruction with the “science of reading,” the catchphrase for a longstanding body of research.

But in the rush to train teachers on the new curriculums, some literacy experts worried that there wasn’t enough emphasis on the basic theory and research behind the science of reading. As hundreds of schools transition away from popular programs that have become widely discredited, many teachers have craved guidance.

A free training program available to New York City teachers aims to fill that gap, helping thousands of educators parse the fundamental principles of the science of reading. The program, now in its second year, was developed by The Reading Institute, a nonprofit launched by Katie Pace Miles, a Brooklyn College professor.

“I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t just about the how‚” Miles said. “No matter what curriculum they have, they’ve got to know: What are the tenets that actually move the needle for readers?”’

Miles underscored that the training could also help address a long-term challenge: Curriculums often come and go during a teacher’s career. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who will take control of the city’s schools on Jan. 1, has signaled he will continue the reading curriculum mandate, though he has indicated teachers should have more flexibility around how to implement it in their classrooms.

The 10-hour virtual course emphasizes phonics — how students learn the relationships between sounds and letters — a key piece of the city’s literacy push. Other segments cover vocabulary, comprehension, writing, and reaching neurodivergent learners. Video footage from three New York City public schools is woven throughout the training to show how teachers are using the science of reading in real-world classrooms.

Katie Pace Miles, a Brooklyn College professor and founder of The Reading Institute, authored the intro course.

The introductory course has free slots for nearly 1,200 New York City teachers for the remainder of this school year (it is also free for all CUNY students). When the slots are filled — or for teachers outside the city— the cost is $25. Of the 2,800 people who took the course last school year, more than 2,000 were from the city’s public schools. (The course is funded by the Benedict Silverman Foundation, which funds Chalkbeat, and the Heckscher Foundation for Children.)

Experts say the training could help fill gaps for teachers who did not receive adequate instruction in their teacher preparation programs about how children learn to read, as schools of education have been criticized for failing to embrace the latest research on reading. New York State officials have said they’re working to address the issue.

Cut to the video: Recorded literacy lessons inspire change

At P.S. 189 in Washington Heights, Principal Johanny Grullon has embraced the additional training, setting aside time during the school’s existing Monday training blocks.

Now, virtually all of the school staff are taking Miles’ science of reading course, including art, music, and gym teachers.

“Everybody plays an important role in teaching students how to read,” Grullon said. “The gym teachers aren’t gonna take out flashcards … but I want them to think about: What can I do in my daily routines as kids are warming up to develop vocabulary?”

Johanny Grullon, the principal of P.S. 189, has rolled out the training program to nearly all of the school's staff.

The science of reading intro course has won attention from other states. Last school year, P.S. 189 showed off the training program to the governors of Rhode Island and Colorado, along with a representative from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office.

Julia Rosa, the library teacher at P.S. 189, was one of the first educators at the school to complete the training and helped convince her colleagues it was worth the time.

The video footage from other New York City classrooms helped persuade her to shift some of her approaches — and try new ones. When her students ask her to spell words during writing exercises, she used to reflexively give them the answers, worrying that veering into spelling exercises would district from the lesson. But videos of students making confident spelling guesses help convince her to change.

In another video, Rosa saw a phonics lesson that involved students using their fingers to trace out letters in blue sand. That activity seemed like it would make a mess in a room with over 20 children. But soon, she was off to the dollar store to buy tupperware containers to try it herself.

“Seeing it done — it gives you more confidence to try it,” she said.

Education Department officials said they hope the training will help teachers reluctant to change their practice and give them a more solid foundation as they deploy the new curriculums.

Staten Island’s superintendent is encouraging educators to take the training, and nearly 1,000 teachers in the borough are enrolled. Allison Angioletti, a district achievement and instructional specialist in the Staten Island superintendent’s office, said she hopes the training helps teachers tailor their lessons and navigate curriculums that are often packed with more content than can fit in a traditional literacy block. On Staten Island, teachers are required to use Into Reading, the most commonly mandated program across the city.

“I want them to be good decision makers,” said Angioletti. “I want them to keep the parts that are most helpful to kids about how they learn how to read.”

Literacy experts said the relatively short course was unlikely to spur major changes in student achievement by itself. But Tim Shanahan, a former Chicago Public Schools official who oversaw that district’s training efforts, said it is still important.

“There are lots of things that need to happen to raise reading achievement,” he said, “and one of them is professional development.”

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

Officials mistakenly told NYC principals students with weapons would face automatic arrest

2025-12-08T22:51:47+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

An Education Department safety official sent a letter to Brooklyn high school principals last week, signaling a major change: Students found with weapons on public school grounds will be automatically arrested.

The message sparked confusion among school leaders and families about how widely it would be applied and whether it could lead to a spike in students getting tangled up in the criminal justice system.

On Monday morning, some schools swiftly informed students and parents about the new policy on student arrests. By the afternoon, Education Department officials admitted the letter was sent in error.

The messages “do not represent a New York City Public School policy,” wrote Jenna Lyle, a department spokesperson. “They are being corrected with the small number of schools that received them.” She did not explain how the mistake was made.

The NYPD, which oversees school safety, confirmed there were no changes in their arrest policy. A spokesperson said about 1,700 weapons have been confiscated in schools so far this school year, a 5% decline compared with the same period last year.

The episode represents a significant miscommunication with school leaders. Multiple principals said that the policy would have been a major change, as arrests have often been made on a case-by-case basis and the Education Department has encouraged less punitive approaches to student misconduct in recent years.

Millenium Brooklyn High School Principal Kevin Conway informed families of the assumed policy shift.

“If you have a pocketknife, razor, scalpel, or any other contraband item in your bag at scanning — regardless of your reason for having the item — you will be arrested as per DOE policy,” he wrote to families in a Monday letter obtained by Chalkbeat. “Students, please make sure to double-check your belongings every morning and adhere to this policy!”

Educators and families were concerned that the communication did not clarify whether all weapons listed in the discipline code would have immediately triggered an arrest. Box cutters and scissors are considered weapons under Education Department policy, though some students might use those for jobs or school projects. Students often carry pepper spray for protection on their commutes, even as it is considered a weapon under school rules.

Corinthia A. Carter, the parent of a junior at Park Slope Collegiate in Brooklyn who heard about the policy through a conversation with the school’s principal, worried that the erroneous policy would have had a disproportionate effect on Black and Latino children. She wondered how the city would explain the mistake to families.

Other school discipline reform advocates were frustrated by the mixed messages but were relieved the student arrest policy was not altered, noting that arrests of city students have declined substantially. In the first three quarters of 2025, police made 485 student arrests — a nearly 52% decline from the same period in 2016, NYPD data show.

“It’s very alarming to allow for any confusion on something like this,” said Johanna Miller, director of the education policy center at the New York Civil Liberties Union.

“Arrests in New York City are very low and that’s something we should be proud of.”

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

Zohran Mamdani’s thin education agenda didn’t stop a surge of donations from NYC DOE employees

2025-12-03T20:51:57+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani received the highest number of individual donations from New York City Education Department employees than any other winning candidate since mayoral control was implemented, a Chalkbeat analysis of more than 20 years of election data found.

Over 500 city residents working in the city’s largest school district donated approximately $40,000 to Mamdani’s campaign, according to the city’s Campaign Finance Board where donors self-report.

However, while Mamdani had more individual donations from Education Department employees than any other winning candidate since 2002, Mayor Eric Adams received the most amount of money donated by DOE employees when he ran in 2021. Roughly 300 DOE employees donated to Adams’ campaign in 2021, which received over $55,000 from those working for the city’s Education Department.

The United Federation of Teachers endorsed Mamdani in the general election after avoiding picking a candidate during the Democratic primary. And even after the union came out in favor of Mamdani, members continued to debate his thin political record as well as the candidate’s position on Israel and the crisis in the Gaza strip, causing some turmoil within the union.

Mamdani won just over half of the city’s vote in November. Among his few K-12 ideas, Mamdani’s push for ending mayoral control and removing the gifted and talented program for kindergartens sparked controversy, yet teachers Chalkbeat spoke to were drawn to his affordability plan.

Mamdani’s campaign galvanized New Yorkers across the city, attracting about 53,890 donations. That’s more than twice as many donors as Mayor Eric Adams had when he won four years ago and former chief Bill de Blasio for his 2013 and 2017 victories.

In terms of total amount raised, Mamdani’s roughly $4 million was the least among the winning candidates since mayoral control of the city’s Education Department began. After Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who donated over $200 million to himself in total for his three campaigns from 2001 to 2009, de Blasio led with over $11 million in 2013.

No employee from the city’s education department donated to Bloomberg’s campaign, according to available records.

Chalkbeat’s analysis only included donors who listed the education department or a specific public school in the employment section.

More than half of DOE donors who supported Mamdani’s campaign identified themselves as teachers, including substitute and special education teachers.

Jonathan Collins, a professor at Teachers College at Columbia University, said it’s not surprising that New York City teachers, whose salaries range from $68,902 to $123,939 for this school year, support a candidate whose leading campaign promise is affordable housing, transportation, and living.

“Amongst the professions where you see degree earners … teachers tend to make the least and so they’re underpaid relative to their level of educational attainment,” Collins said. “They are middle class people paid like working class people. They’re particularly interested in these affordability campaigns.”

Some teachers who donated to Mamdani’s campaign acknowledged his K-12 education agenda was not a big part of his platform.

Emma Webley, a bilingual teacher at P.S 89 Cypress Hills in Brooklyn, said while canvassing for Mamdani, many educators would question his lack of education policies. She agrees with Mamdani’s opposition to mayoral control but admits the mayor-elect needs to polish his stance more, such as clarifying whether Adams’ mandatory reading curriculum, known as NYC Reads, will continue in his administration.

“It would make sense for him to be focusing on housing and other issues first and then moving on to what is happening in the classroom. But if that didn’t happen ... in the first year of his leadership, then I would be asking questions,” she said.

Kyle DeAngelis, a third grade teacher at Harlem’s P.S 368, also known as the William Lynch School, met Mamdani in February at an “Educators for Zohran” meetup, a coalition of teachers independent of the campaign, advocating for the mayor-elect. DeAngelis was impressed by the candidate, he said, and discussed hiring more counselors and social workers to provide mental health services for students. Mamdani agreed and from there, the third grade teacher knew he would rank the Queens assemblymen first.

He felt compelled to donate and volunteer for Mamdani’s campaign because living on a teacher’s salary in the city is challenging, and his salary raises have not kept up with inflation. He was also drawn to Mamdani’s affordability agenda since food and housing insecurity is a constant issue his students have brought up in class.

“It’s not just what’s going on within the four walls of the classroom,” DeAngelis said. “When children cannot afford or families can’t afford childcare, when they can’t afford groceries, when they can’t afford rent, when they can’t afford healthcare, these are all things that have a profound impact on the work that we do in classrooms every day.”

Ananya Chetia is a reporting intern with Chalkbeat NY. Contact Ananya at achetia@chalkbeat.org.

NYC officials declare victory on class size caps after quietly exempting thousands of classes

2025-11-18T01:29:05+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Monday that the city met a high-stakes test under the state’s class size reduction law: ensuring 60% of this year’s classrooms fell under the new limits.

But he failed to mention that the city only cleared that hurdle by quietly declaring thousands of classrooms exempt from the requirements. A Chalkbeat analysis of data released Monday found that without the exemptions the city would have fallen just short of compliance, potentially putting it at risk of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in state aid.

Officials declared roughly 10,500 of the city’s more than 150,000 classes exempt. With those classrooms removed from the equation, 64% of classrooms citywide were in compliance — the rate city officials reported to the state. The city’s rate without the exemptions? 59.5%.

Several administrators and parents at schools with exempted classrooms said they were unaware they had won exemptions — and hadn’t requested them.

“I was a little surprised to see we were listed as exempt,” said one principal who didn’t ask for the exemptions and didn’t know they were coming.

“It’s ironic because they ask us to come up with a plan for our school … but then when they make larger decisions, they don’t ask us anything,” said the principal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

The state’s sweeping class size law, which limits classes to between 20 and 25 students, took effect in 2022 and requires that an additional 20% of classrooms fall under the caps each year. This year’s 60% mandate was the first major test the city faced, since only 47% of classes were under the caps last November. (Classes that require larger groups like physical education are not subject to the caps.)

The challenge gets more daunting over the next year as the city races to get 80% of classes under the caps, soliciting another round of class size reduction plans from principals, who can request changes to their building configuration and money to hire additional teachers. City officials project the annual cost of hiring additional teachers could be as high as $1.7 billion when the caps are fully implemented, with up to $18 billion in school construction costs on top of that.

Some critics said the flood of exemptions this year heightens their concerns that the city will only lean more heavily on them in the years to come.

“It just underlines and emphasizes the fact that they don’t have a serious plan, and they never have,” said Leonie Haimson, the executive director of the advocacy group Class Size Matters and a key advocate for the state law.

To meet the state’s 60% threshold, the city spent roughly $450 million on a teacher hiring spree this fall — and took advantage for the first time of a clause in the law that allows some schools to ignore the requirements if they have limited space, are overenrolled, are in financial distress, or face a shortage of licensed teachers. The city exempted classes at more than 120 schools, Chalkbeat’s analysis found.

Teachers union officials confirmed Monday that principals were not directly involved in the exemption process. Under state law, the chancellor of the Education Department and the presidents of the unions for teachers and administrators can — and did — make the decisions.

“It’s not up to the school,” teachers union President Michael Mulgrew told Chalkbeat. “This is a law for the school system.”

An Education Department spokesperson said the exemptions must be renegotiated every year and schools that received exemptions this year should still aim for full class size compliance.

“Surpassing 60 percent of our class size reduction target for the 2025–2026 school year is a major step forward, and we’re not slowing down," Adams said in a statement.

Schools can get a pass for “overenrollment” or space limitations

A handful of the exemptions were already agreed to over the summer. In a class size plan released in July, city and union officials agreed to exempt the city’s eight specialized high schools, coveted programs like Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech that admit students based on a single test, on the grounds they are “overenrolled.”

Another set of schools could qualify for exemptions based on lack of space if a new annex or school building was in the works nearby, officials said in July. In the city’s two current capital plans, from 2020-24 and from 2025-29, a total of about 26,000 seats are supposed to be added in coming years through a combination of annexes and new buildings.

But people at several of the schools that received exemptions Monday said they were unaware of any annex or school construction plans nearby. At least three schools receiving class size exemptions had no new construction projects listed in their districts, according to the city’s data.

At P.S./I.S. 187 in Washington Heights, where 91 of 118 classes were issued exemptions, an annex project was recently added to the city’s capital plan to deliver 342 seats — but with no estimated completion date.

Olympia Kazi, a parent at the school who has been pushing for years for lower class sizes, said she was “saddened and dismayed” to learn about the exemptions.

“An annex may materialize at best in three to four years,” she said. “That means a generation of kids will still go through elementary school in overcrowded classes.”

Kazi noted that she suggested several other strategies for reducing class sizes while the school awaits additional space, including staggering start times for different groups of students and capping incoming kindergarten enrollment. Those ideas haven’t gone anywhere.

“I believe class size is a major issue for every school, and especially the overcrowded schools,” she said. “I wish there had been real community engagement before they decided any of this and an explanation of the reasoning behind this.”

Haimson believes granting the exemptions without including school communities in the process violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the law.

Having union officials help decide on exemptions at schools “where the principals don’t necessarily even want those exemptions, is bizarre,” she said.

Haimson added that new construction isn’t guaranteed to bring schools under the class size caps if the city doesn’t limit enrollment at overcrowded schools. Hundreds of schools don’t have the space to meet the class size caps, officials say, but the city has largely rejected requests to cap their enrollment.

Restricting enrollment is also a non-starter with the teachers union.

At the Boerum Hill School for International Studies, a 6-12 campus, more than half of the school’s 222 classes are exempt from the new class size caps. Antonia Ferraro Martinelli, the parent of a ninth grader at the school, said the campus is crunched for space in part because it houses four schools and there is little room to shrink classes.

News of the exemptions came as a surprise to parent leaders and the school administration, however, because they hadn’t requested them. The school’s principal is “putting her efforts toward being in compliance so this is coming out of left field,” said Ferraro Martinelli, who spoke with the principal on Monday. (The principal did not respond to a request for comment.)

Several educators and parents at schools that received exemptions said they plan to continue pushing to reduce class sizes.

In general, the city’s highest-need schools stand to benefit the least from the class size caps because they already tend to have smaller classes. A disproportionate share of spending to reduce class sizes is flowing to more affluent campuses, city data show. Because of that, some advocates with equity concerns called on city and state leaders last week to pause the class size caps entirely, a move permitted under the law.

Still, Education Department officials declined to request a pause, even as they previously raised similar equity concerns. Their reason: They’re making plenty of progress without it.

Correction: Nov. 20, 2025: A previous version of this story used the incorrect name for P.S./I.S. 187.

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.

Advocates call for pause on NYC class size mandate to give Mamdani time to address equity concerns

2025-11-13T19:00:12+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Just two days before the deadline, a group of education advocates on Thursday urged city officials to request a pause to state law that requires New York City to sharply reduce class sizes.

They contend a pause could allow incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani to address a central inequity: The city’s highest-need schools stand to benefit the least from mandatory class size caps.

All of the city’s public schools must cap class sizes at 20-25 students, depending on grade level, by 2028. City officials expected 60% of classrooms across the city would meet the caps this year, as required by law, largely by hiring more teachers.

Next year’s 80% benchmark will be a much bigger challenge. Many campuses don’t have space for smaller classes without capping enrollment, a nonstarter with many families. And building new classrooms is expensive and time-consuming. The city is allowed to request school-level exemptions to the law, though they must be approved by union officials.

A provision of the law gives city officials an opportunity to “recommend a pause of the class size reduction plan” — a request that must be made as part of a financial impact statement due Nov. 15. State officials can withhold funding if the city Education Department fails to comply with the law.

“The bottom line is that this well-intentioned mandate will transfer resources — money, teachers, and buildings — from the schools that need them the most to the schools that need them the least,” said Richard Buery, the CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation and a former deputy under Mayor Bill de Blasio. He was joined at a Thursday press conference by advocates from EdTrust-New York and Educators for Excellence.

Buery said it is the “wrong time” to focus on system-wide class size reductions given threats from the Trump administration to slash federal funding and as city officials are receiving less money from the state than expected.

Others stressed that a pause would allow Mamdani to negotiate a plan with the state legislature to implement the law more equitably. It would not prevent him from continuing to lower class sizes, they added.

“He could also make the decision to use some of this money to reduce class size in a few communities or a few grade levels, and use other resources to support his other ambitious goals around early childhood,” said Evan Stone, CEO of Educators for Excellence, a teacher advocacy group.

It’s unclear whether Mamdani would support such a move, and a spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. The mayor-elect has repeatedly said he supports the class size law and campaigned on a plan to ramp up teacher hiring to comply with it.

Tension over benefits and tradeoffs of class size law

Smaller classes are popular among many educators and families. The city’s teachers union, which endorsed Mamdani, lobbied fiercely for the law, arguing small classes are essential to learning and can help attract educators to the profession. Studies suggest that students learn more in small classes and that those from low-income families tend to benefit the most.

But in practice, the class size mandate has significant tradeoffs. Because the city’s highest-poverty schools generally have smaller classes, they are least likely to benefit from the new cap, a Chalkbeat analysis found. That will require the city to spend resources on campuses that are relatively more affluent and may divert funding that school leaders could have used for other programs.

Union officials counter that the majority of students who will experience smaller classes come from low-income families, as they are the vast majority of students in city schools. United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew criticized the push to delay implementing the law.

“They claim to work on behalf of students and families in poverty, yet they seek to derail an initiative that prioritizes high-need schools,” Mulgrew said in a statement. “There is no reason to pause. This initiative is working.”

Even as union officials noted the city is required to prioritize high-need schools first, the law mandates that the class size caps apply to all schools by 2028 regardless of student poverty levels.

Advocates also warned that the teacher hiring spree could exacerbate turnover at higher-poverty schools. A chunk of the new educators required to staff smaller classes are likely to be drawn from needy schools, an analysis from the Urban Institute think tank found. Better-off schools will have to ramp up hiring and often are perceived as more desirable teaching assignments.

City mum on whether to request a pause

The city’s Education Department declined to say whether it will ask for a pause as part of a broader class size financial impact statement due Saturday. A spokesperson said only they will have more to share soon.

As part of the report, city officials are expected to reveal what percentage of classes are in compliance with the law. Last school year, nearly 47% of classes complied with the new caps, above the 40% required.

Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has previously criticized the class size law, arguing that state officials did not commit to sending the city funding to cover it. The annual cost of hiring more than 10,000 new teachers that are expected to staff smaller classes is between $1.3 billion and $1.9 billion, according to the Education Department and Independent Budget Office (not including additional school construction costs which could cost tens of billions more in the long run).

After failing to block the law, Adams has vowed to comply with it.

If the Education Department does request a pause, advocates said it will fall to state education Commissioner Betty Rosa to sign off. (A spokesperson for Rosa did not confirm that power will fall to her and the law does not explicitly say.) Rosa has previously expressed her own concerns about the class size law, noting it will not benefit all schools equally.

“You’re gonna have to take it from Peter to give it to Paul,” she previously said.

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

These 15 NYC schools will get on-site banking services in effort to boost financial literacy

2025-11-12T16:25:48+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Fifteen New York City public schools will offer information about banking services on site next year through a pilot program designed to expand financial literacy and access, city officials announced Wednesday.

The program is part of Mayor Eric Adams’ “financial literacy for youth” initiative, which the mayor revealed in January and is now beginning to take shape.

“If you don’t teach people how to use their money, they will lose their money,” Adams said in a statement. The program will “bring banking services directly to students and give them hands-on experience opening up a safe, affordable bank account, learning about financial products, and starting careers in banking and finance.”

The 15 schools were chosen in part because they are in neighborhoods where families have historically lacked access to banking services. Each campus will also have access to financial educators who provide one-on-one counseling, lead workshops for families, and help teachers devise classroom materials.

Those educators will cover topics that range from money management basics to spotting financial scams and will eventually work in other schools as well. City officials have pledged to expand the program to reach 350,000 students and families by 2030, a project that is projected to cost about $25 million. It will be up to Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani to see the effort through.

A City Hall spokesperson indicated that the partnering banks will offer young people safe and affordable products, such as accounts to students over 16 that they can control.

Financial literacy has been a growing push among state and city leaders — with dozens of states requiring a personal finance course to graduate. New York State leaders are also planning to include financial literacy in their revamped graduation standards.

Still, some critics worry that financial literacy programs don’t address root problems with the financial sector and shift the onus away from policymakers to ensure the system is fair and transparent.

Financial institutions are also often big supporters of school-based financial literacy and may stand to gain from marketing their products to students and families. City officials said 12 financial institutions are partnering with schools so far including a mix of major commercial banks and local credit unions.

Here is a list of the first 15 schools that will receive on-campus banking services:

Manhattan District 2: Urban Assembly Early College High School of Emergency Medicine

Manhattan District 3: The Urban Assembly School for Green Careers

Manhattan District 5: Mott Hall High School

Bronx District 7: The Laboratory School of Finance and Technology

Bronx District 8: Longwood Prep

Bronx District 9: Bronx High School for Medical Science

Bronx District 10: Fordham High School for the Arts

Bronx District 11: Bronx Lab School

Bronx District 12: East Bronx Academy for the Future

Brooklyn District 14: High School for Enterprise, Business and Technology

Brooklyn District 19: World Academy for Total Community Health High School

Brooklyn District 21: John Dewey High School

Brooklyn District 23: Brooklyn Collegiate: A College Board School

Queens District 30: Long Island City High School

Staten Island District 31: The Eagle Academy for Young Men of Staten Island

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

NYC school suspensions fall to lowest level since the pandemic, but stark disparities remain

2025-11-11T20:38:45+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

New York City schools handed out fewer suspensions last year, the lowest rate since the pandemic forced school buildings to shutter, according to new Education Department statistics.

Overall, schools issued 27,143 suspensions during the 2024-25 school year, down 2.1% from the year before.

The decline was driven by a big drop in superintendent suspensions, which run six days or more and are served at outside suspension sites. Students received those lengthier punishments nearly 5,600 times last school year, down from about 6,200 the year before — a 10% decline.

Principal suspensions, which last for five days or fewer and are typically served in school, were issued more than 21,500 times, only slightly higher than the year before. (The figures do not include charter schools.)

Lengthy suspensions have recently drawn increased scrutiny. Legal Services NYC, a public interest group, filed a lawsuit in May alleging the city uses an inappropriately low standard of proof in suspension hearings, violating the U.S. Constitution. (City officials have moved to dismiss the case.) Schools have also routinely suspended students with disabilities for longer than legally allowed by federal law, a Chalkbeat investigation found.

It’s unclear what drove the decrease in lengthy punishments last school year. Schools typically must get approval from a central office administrator to issue a superintendent suspension.

“There haven’t been any clear policy changes,” said Rohini Singh, the director of the school justice project at Advocates for Children, which helps families to navigate the suspension process. “Certainly, we’re happy to see that the overall number of suspensions is decreasing.”

Still, Singh noted that troubling disparities persist.

About 39% of all suspensions were issued to Black students and a similar share went to students with disabilities, even as only 19% of the city’s public school students are Black and 22% have a disability. Latino students, who represent 42% of the student body, were suspended roughly in line with their share of the population. White and Asian American students were far less likely to be suspended compared to their share of the population.

Children living in foster care were at least four times as likely to be suspended as their peers, an uptick from last year, according to an analysis from the group Advocates for Children, which has pushed for reforms to school discipline policies.

An Education Department spokesperson celebrated the decline, though did not directly address the disparities.

“We are proud that over the past year, we have decreased overall suspensions,” department spokesperson Jenna Lyle wrote in an email. “We are continuously working towards encouraging schools to address any issues in a positive, supportive, and less punitive manner where possible.”

Many — though not all — studies suggest that suspensions hurt the suspended students academically. One study based on New York City found that removing students from their classrooms contributed to students passing fewer classes and increased their risk of dropping out.

After the pandemic, some observers feared suspensions might spike as concerns about student mental health and behavior grew. Others worried that Mayor Eric Adams’ tough-on-crime posture toward public safety could ripple into schools, though there have not been any major policy changes to the city’s discipline code under his watch.

His predecessor, Mayor Bill de Blasio, overhauled the code to reduce suspensions for minor infractions and cap most suspensions at 20 days. (Suspensions can still run for months or even an entire school year in some cases.)

Groups that oppose suspensions have successfully pushed the city in recent years to invest in alternatives such as restorative justice, which can include peer mediation and other methods of talking through conflicts. Some educators have countered that suspensions are an important tool for maintaining a safe learning environment and the city has not done enough to support alternative approaches.

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has said little about how he would approach school discipline, though his campaign platform emphasized mental health support for students. Some advocates called on the incoming administration to boost funding for those programs and ensure long-term support for other mental health initiatives that have had to fight to maintain funding each year.

“We’re encouraged by a lot of what we’ve heard, but it still remains to be seen what’s going to happen,” Singh said.

Ananya Chetia contributed data analysis.

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

Former NYC schools chief a finalist for Chicago schools CEO

2025-11-07T21:26:42+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest education news.

A former New York City schools chief is one of the two finalists for the job of Chicago Public Schools’ next CEO, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the situation.

Meisha Ross Porter, who led New York City Public Schools in 2021, will interview with Chicago Board of Education members, a community panel, and the mayor next week.

Chicago’s selection will mark the first time its new 21-member school board chooses a new leader for the nation’s fourth largest school district. Earlier this week, WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times reported that the current interim CEO Macquline King was no longer in the running for the top job. Chalkbeat could not confirm the identity of the other finalist. Late Friday, the outlet also reported Denver Public Schools Superintendent Alex Marrero was a finalist. Marrero told Chalkbeat in a statement Friday that “my dedication remains firmly with Denver Public Schools where I am proud to continue serving as superintendent.”

Porter spent more than two decades working in New York City’s public schools, rising up the ranks as a teacher, principal, and high-level administrator. She ultimately became the first Black woman to lead the nation’s largest school system in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic after her predecessor abruptly stepped down.

She only spent 10 months at the helm of New York City’s public schools, appointed in March 2021 and replaced when Mayor Bill de Blasio left office at the end of the year.

In her short tenure, Porter oversaw two sweeping but late-breaking policy pushes under de Blasio that were subsequently scrapped by Mayor Eric Adams: a plan to eliminate separate gifted and talented classes and a $200 million proposed universal curriculum.

Porter is widely respected by many education leaders in New York and has also been floated as a possible schools chief for incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Mamdani has said he is also considering current Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos for the role.

Porter did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither Chicago Board of Education President Sean Harden nor the school board’s chief of staff returned requests for comment.

After leaving her post as New York City’s schools chief, Porter became the president and CEO of the Bronx Community Foundation. The foundation was set up to help finance other local nonprofits, but was in turmoil during her time there. It failed to distribute most of the money it raised from 2019 to 2023 and spent more on consultants and overhead than charitable giving, according to an investigation by the news organization New York Focus. In 2024, the organization’s board of directors fired Porter.

More recently, Porter has served as a visiting senior fellow at the Center for Educational Innovation, an organization that works with school leaders and families, according to her LinkedIn profile.

The Chicago Board of Education is scheduled to meet Monday for a special meeting during which they plan to interview the two finalists in person, WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times reported this week. The board plans to reconvene later in the week to make a final pick and the full 21-member board could then vote on a final contract with the new leader at a meeting scheduled for Dec. 3.

Chicago began its process to find a new leader in March, hiring the search firm Alma Advisory Group, an executive search firm known for its work helping school boards hire superintendents.

The previous CPS CEO Pedro Martinez was fired without cause in late December 2024, but remained at the helm of the district until late June. Martinez, who made about $360,000 annually as head of CPS, clashed with Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teachers union organizer, over how to handle the district’s finances. The tensions at one point led to Johnson’s entire seven-member appointed board resigning en masse.

For the past 30 years under mayoral control, CPS’s leader has been chosen by the city’s mayor.

Earlier this year, a key lawmaker who helped pave the way for an elected school board raised the possibility that the mayor should still get the final say on who runs CPS. Legal experts and local officials disagree on whether that is still the case and the language in state law is murky.

Nevertheless, Johnson is expected to interview both finalists next week, according to a source close to the search process. He also maintains significant influence over the school board given that 11 of 21 members are his appointees.

Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates criticized the secrecy surrounding the finalists and the “hand-picked panel” of community members being asked for input, calling it “a fundamental failure of the democratic values this new process was meant to uphold.”

“Black and Brown students and their families will bear the brunt of this decision,” Davis Gates said. “Their voices must be at the center of this process, not excluded from it.”

But in a letter sent to the school board president late Friday night, Davis Gates said “the authority to appoint the CPS CEO resides with the Mayor of the City of Chicago” and argued that the board’s “apparent belief that it is empowered” to pick the district’s next leader is against state law.

Dwayne Truss, a member of the West Side branch of the NAACP, said the group is upset that interim CEO King has been eliminated as a finalist.

Truss, a former member of the Board of Education, said the current board should be prioritizing a local candidate. He pointed to former “outsider” CEOs, including Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who was convicted of receiving bribes during her time at Chicago Public Schools, as failing to be successful.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a 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.

NYC schools pilot ‘panic button’ for instant 911 access during active shooter emergencies

2025-10-27T22:34:10+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

New York City public schools are piloting a new emergency alert system that gives direct and immediate access to 911 if an active shooter is present at their buildings, Mayor Eric Adams announced on Monday.

“[It] is capable of initiating a 911 response in under 10 seconds,” said Adams, noting that the pilot is the nation’s first of its kind initiative.

The city plans to test the device at 51 public schools located in 25 school buildings across the five boroughs this academic year, Adams said. The schools will have multiple buttons affixed to certain locations as well as wireless lanyards that staffers can wear that can activate the emergency system.

Adams showed off the new Emergency Alert System at Brooklyn’s Spring Creek campus, holding it in his palm, the word “POLICE” written in black and a red button with the word “PUSH” written in white.

He and Alicia Arjune, a student at the Academy for Young Writers, pressed the red button together. Within a second an alarm rang. A screen behind the two then showed an alert was coming from Spring Creek Community School.

“This panic button pilot will offer additional peace of mind to myself and my fellow students so we can spend our time in school figuring what our passions are and just being kids,” Alicia said at the press conference.

The device comes after the debut of SaferWatch, an app designed by a Florida-based tech firm that has a “panic button,” allowing school safety agents to respond quickly to emergencies, including shootings. (That app, piloted at five schools, faced scrutiny after company officials enlisted the help of a consulting agency owned by the brother of then-schools Chancellor David Banks to expand its footprint in city schools.)

The new system was developed in-house by the city’s Office of Technology and Innovation along with the help of vendor SOS Technologies.

In 2023, the city’s technology office, along with the Emergency Management division, the Mayor’s office, Education Department, and NYPD’s School Safety Division began researching school-based panic buttons with a direct line to 911 during an active-shooter emergency.

The current emergency alert relies on transferring calls through a remote system in another state before rerouting to the city.

The pilot builds on the other safety measures implemented at schools, said schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos.

“This includes the Safer Access Program, which locks main entrances to our buildings, NYPD School Safety Agents in every school, and emergency protocols that keep our schools safe,” she said in a statement.

The number of School Safety Agents plummeted from 5,050 in 2019 to 3,613 in 2024-25, according to data from the Independent Budget Office and the Education Department’s website.

The new tool bypasses the 911 call flow, going straight to dispatch, and it can initiate a response from 911 quickly, Adam said at Monday’s press conference. The schools will also have audible and visual indicators notifying everyone that 911 has been alerted and that the schools are on hard lockdown. NYPD School Safety and DOE officials will also get electronic notifications.

Over 3,000 K-12 school shooting incidents occurred in the United States between 1966 and September 2025, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database (The dataset includes all shootings happening on school property at any time of the day or week with intent to harm. This includes sports games, after-school events, and gang violences.) School shootings peaked at 351 in 2023, and the number of victims shot, both fatal and wounded, peaked at 276 in 2024.

This month, a 17-year-old high school student was found with a loaded pistol at East Brooklyn Community High School, according to police.

Similarly in September, a 16-year-old Queens high school student had a loaded gun in his backpack at Cardozo High School in Bayside. Police said the teen posted a threat on Instagram.

At the press conference Monday, Adams noted his administration’s efforts during his tenure to confiscate illegal guns from across the city. This year, the administration has removed over 4,100, according to the press release.

“We’ve already taken more than 24,097 illegal guns off our streets, and now we’re making sure our classrooms have the strongest, fastest protection possible,” Adams said.

Ananya Chetia is a reporting intern at Chalkbeat. Contact Ananya at achetia@chalkbeat.org.

Going DOGE on the DOE: Mamdani wants to reclaim ‘efficiency’ from the right and root out waste

2025-10-21T23:05:20+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Move over, DOGE.

Zohran Mamdani wants to reclaim the mantle of government efficiency — and he’s targeting the city Education Department’s $41 billion budget.

On Tuesday, the mayoral frontrunner zeroed in on the school system’s contracting process, which he said is slow, poorly managed, and rife with wasteful spending.

“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 told reporters. Musk spearheaded the Department of Government Efficiency under President Donald Trump, an effort to slash government programs.

Mamdani’s plan would “overhaul procurement infrastructure across the DOE,” he said. Contracts with outside vendors represent about $10 billion of the Education Department’s budget.

The announcement on Tuesday was the second education proposal his campaign has rolled out in recent weeks. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent, has repeatedly called out Mamdani for not releasing a more detailed education plan.

As the largest city agency, the Education Department is a frequent target of politicians who contend the public school system isn’t generating outcomes for students in line with its spending. Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa recently vowed to slash $10 billion from the department’s budget, roughly 42% of the city’s contribution to the public school system.

Mamdani acknowledged that many contracts are “essential” and indicated his goal is to root out duplicative spending and plow those dollars back into classrooms rather than slash the system’s budget.

If elected, Mamdani said he would conduct annual audits of the department’s 50 biggest vendors and 25 largest contracts, establish “procurement hubs” in every borough, and require that the department use the same online system for vendors as other city agencies.

Focusing on Education Department spending could help the mayoral frontrunner and Democratic nominee find money for other new programs he’s proposed. Though he has promised to push for tax increases on businesses and the rich to finance some of his most ambitious campaign proposals, he also acknowledged that he may need to find money for new programs within the city’s existing budget. When he unveiled a $12 million teacher recruitment effort earlier this month, he suggested it would be financed by cutting waste.

Mamdani did not indicate how much money he anticipates saving by improving the procurement process, only saying it would lead to a 10% reduction in “redundant spending.” He added the plan would reduce the city’s reliance on emergency procurement procedures and speed up the contracting process.

Mamdani did not offer many examples of duplicative contracts. When asked by a reporter for specific cases, he pointed to hundreds of millions worth of technology purchases during the pandemic, noting the Education Department did not carefully track those devices.

“These were contracts that the DOE entered into without any kind of a system of coordinating inventory,” Mamdani said.

The proposal won praise from the city’s teachers union. “Fixing this tangled mess is long overdue,” United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said in a statement. He called the procurement system “a chronic source of frustration.” (The union endorsed Mamdani in the general election.)

Some budget experts said it is encouraging that Mamdani is focusing on the issue.

“This is an astronomically complex and large system and is likely that there is duplication and inefficiency within that,” said Ana Champeny, the vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission, a watchdog group. The “monumental challenge,” Champeny said, is “how do you start identifying that and ensure you get the best bang for your buck?”

Pruning contracts can lead to significant outcry. When the Adams administration cut $60 million from the Education Department’s food budget, which is largely fulfilled by contractors, schools were forced to yank popular food items from cafeterias, drawing backlash from students. Many of the items were eventually restored.

Other observers noted that Mamdani’s focus on reforming the contracting process could be an effort to reassure middle class and higher-income voters that he will be a responsible steward of the city’s budget. It is also popular with the city’s teachers union, as it directs possible cuts away from their members, said Jonathan Collins, a professor of political science and education at Columbia University Teachers College.

Still, Collins said it’s unclear how the procurement reforms fit into Mamdani’s broader thinking about how to improve the city’s school system. Mamdani has recently released proposals across very different topics, from improving teacher recruitment to phasing out gifted programs for the city’s youngest students.

“We’ve been wanting to see how these different ideas fit together and instead he’s been pivoting from one idea to another,” Collins said.

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

NYC sues Trump officials for revoking $47 million in school grants over trans student protections

2025-10-16T19:24:48+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

New York City has filed a lawsuit to restore $47 million in grant funding the Trump administration yanked from schools because city officials refused to scrap policies that protect transgender students.

In cancelling the grants issued through the U.S. Department of Education’s Magnet School Assistance Program, the federal government put “politics before public schools,” claimed the complaint filed Wednesday in federal court.

“The Department’s unprecedented actions — undertaken without notice, investigation, hearing, or opportunity to respond, and without a valid substantive basis — represent a blatant attempt to avoid the exacting process required by law,” the lawsuit stated.

The magnet grant funding supports 19 schools across the city and is designed to help spur racial integration by launching a range of new programs, including in journalism, math, science, performing arts, and civic activism, according to the complaint. Grants for school districts in Chicago and Fairfax, Virginia, were also canceled.

The grant cancellation marked the first known attempt by the Trump administration to revoke funding for the city’s public schools because of its contested interpretation of civil rights laws. The lawsuit notes that the feds had routinely signed off on the city’s compliance with federal law in past years and appeared to be using the grants as leverage to pressure the city on unrelated policies designed to protect trans students.

Officials for the U.S. Education Department said the lawsuit did not have merit. They reiterated the administration’s position that the grant could not be certified because the city’s policies allowing transgender students to use facilities in line with their gender identity violate Title IX, prohibiting sex discrimination at educational institutions receiving federal funding. The Trump administration has mounted an aggressive push to roll back protections for transgender students and has targeted districts in Virginia, Colorado, and Illinois.

The city’s legal challenge is notable because Mayor Eric Adams previously signaled that he agreed with the Trump administration’s position that the city’s protections go too far. After federal officials threatened to cancel the grant funding, Adams railed against city policies that allow transgender students to use bathrooms and participate in sports teams in accordance with their gender identity.

A press release from City Hall announcing the lawsuit included a statement from the schools chancellor and the city’s top lawyer, but not the mayor. (City Hall spokesperson Zachary Nosanchuk noted that the mayor posted on X in support of the case.)

“While many talk about change, the Adams administration has always been about real, meaningful action — which means challenging the federal government’s unfair, illegal, and actually impossible demand for New York City Public Schools to change a state law,” Nosanchuk said in a statement.

The fight over the funding began a month ago, when the federal government threatened to withhold funding over Title IX violations, giving the city a week to agree to adopting “biology-based definitions for the words ‘male’ and ‘female.’”

The city asked for more time, but Trump administration officials said they needed to certify compliance before its fiscal year ended on Sept. 30. When the city did not meet the deadline to overhaul its policies, the federal government announced it would not release the grant money.

City lawyers contend that the Trump administration failed to follow rules for revoking funding under Title IX, including offering an opportunity for a hearing, communicating findings on the record, and filing reports with congress.

“Department actions are a clear attempted end run around the Congressional directive that school funding not be pulled on a whim,” the suit claims. It asks the court to restore the $47 million grant and block the Trump administration from canceling it in the future.

Roughly 7,700 New York City students attend the affected schools, which are predominantly Black and Latino, according to the suit. City officials previously said about 8,500 students would be affected; a spokesperson did not explain the discrepancy.

The mayor’s desire to rethink the city’s policies on transgender students drew fresh attention to his ties to the Trump administration, which has reportedly considered offering him a job. Last year, the Justice Department successfully pressed federal prosecutors to drop corruption charges against Adams.

This week, the mayor said he is mulling three “dream jobs,” though he has not said what they are.

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

Which NYC school districts have or lack resources? Chancellor Aviles-Ramos launches tool to keep track.

2025-09-29T23:38:47+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

In her first “State of Our Schools” address Monday, Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos gave an overview of how the Education Department is meeting families’ needs and announced a new accountability tool that breaks down a variety of initiatives, from the expansion of the NYC Reads curriculum mandate to chronic absenteeism rates per district.

The tool is divided into family engagement, teacher support, and student well-being, tracking 37 topics ranging from staff hiring updates and expanding autism programs to increasing voter turnout for the local Community Education Council elections.

“As your chancellor, I want us to operate differently. More openly,” Aviles-Ramos told the packed auditorium of administrators, elected officials, and parents at Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics in East Harlem.

Aviles-Ramos, nearly one year into the position after David Banks abruptly resigned last fall, was stating her case for making the nation’s largest school system more transparent. Her address came just one day after Mayor Eric Adams announced he’s bowing out of the race, a development that could mean the city will see a new chancellor in a few months.

During the address, which included a thunderous marching band opening, students dancing to Bad Bunny, and a standing ovation for Aviles-Ramos, Adams’ absence quietly lingered. Aviles-Ramos thanked the mayor in her address but refused to answer questions related to his campaign’s end.

Some parents at the event said they were particularly pleased with the accountability tool. Manhattan mom Naomi Peña said it will tell families “what’s going on or not” at schools instead of making them wait for answers, allowing families to compare progress between the current school year with the year before.

For example, the dashboard shows NYC Solves, a city-approved math program under the Adams administration, went from being used at 512 schools last year to nearly 600 today. But three districts in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens had one less school using the program compared to last year, according to the tool.

The new dashboard also revealed that 20% of schools have yet to hold school safety meetings, which they are mandated to do starting this fall. This school year, the city also launched anti-bullying and anti-vaping campaigns, charging students with leading the campaigns. So far, 95% of schools have worked on the initiative, the new tool showed.

“For as long as I am here and when I started I was very clear that my commitment remains to children, families, and educators,” Aviles-Ramos said.

Here are more takeaways from Aviles-Ramos’ speech:

NYC Reads turns to English language learners

The audience cheered for the announcement of the NYC Reads English Language Development curricula, a program designed to help improve literacy for students who are learning English as a new language. The program comes after this month’s audit from Comptroller Brad Lander, which found the city’s public schools routinely fail to provide instruction for English language learners.

Aviles-Ramos also highlighted an approved list of programs for educators to intervene if any student is struggling with reading that was launched earlier in the fall.

A new (but vague) AI framework

As in former chancellor Banks’ “State of Our Schools” speech last year, artificial intelligence was a hot topic. Banks had discussed using the technology to create “personalized learning plans for every child.” Aviles-Ramos said she is embracing AI with a four-part framework, the details of which would be shared later.

“We are preparing students for AI-powered lives and careers,” she said and mentioned that teachers and students will be taught how to use AI responsibly. The chancellor also said the DOE will use it for “operational and instructional efficiencies” and will “mitigate” bias and cultural responsiveness.

Expanding resources for unhoused students

Aviles-Ramos said she is expanding its “family connectors” program this fall, where over 2,000 adult volunteers signed up to connect with children and families across the school system to provide them with information on housing, food access, public benefits, and legal aid as way to boost attendance and academics.

A program that connects students in homeless shelters with school staffers — called “Every Child and Family is Known” — has expanded to 125 schools, up from 110 when it launched last school year.

Roughly 1 in 8 New York City students experienced homelessness last year, a record high. Through the “Every Child” program, there are over 850 adults supporting up to 4,000 students living in shelters, according to the dashboard.

When asked if the program was launched in response to the Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani’s pitch for a similar program, Aviles-Ramos said, “This was in the works for a long time.”

The Education Department did not provide information on how volunteers are selected at the time of publishing but officials said an adult will check on with unhoused children daily and that it’s about “strengthening the bond between home and school.”

Correction: This story originally misstated the number of months Aviles-Ramos has been in her role. And the 2,000 volunteers through the “family connectors” program do not also work on the “Every Child and Family is Known” program.

Ananya Chetia is a reporting intern for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Ananya achetia@chalkbeat.org.

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

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

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

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 still hasn’t made most special education fixes required by court order two years ago

2025-08-05T20:34:41+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

After a federal judge in 2023 ordered city officials to make dozens of reforms to more swiftly provide special education services to families who won legal disputes, top Education Department officials embraced the extra oversight.

Yet almost as soon as the order was handed down, the city began to miss deadlines. Now, two years later, the Education Department has failed to comply with most of the order’s requirements.

At the time of the ruling, former schools Chancellor David Banks displayed an unusual level of support for a court action targeting his own agency.

“We, too, believe that change is long overdue,” he said. “We are moving aggressively to set a new course.”

But out of the 51 steps outlined in the court order issued by Manhattan federal Judge Loretta Preska, the city has implemented just 21 of them, according to a July report from a court appointed monitor. Some of the requirements are more than a year overdue.

As a result, special education experts warn that thousands of families are likely to continue facing lengthy delays for special education services and payments. There is little evidence that the court order has prompted the city to significantly speed up the process in the vast majority of cases, said Rebecca Shore, the litigation director at Advocates for Children, which brought the lawsuit that prompted the court order. Independent audits have yet to show significant progress.

Shore hoped that the court-ordered reforms “would actually help students get the ordered services that they require more quickly,” she said. “That’s still not happening.”

The court order was designed to resolve longstanding problems with the city’s special education system. Families often wait months or even years for the Education Department to implement services or make payments after they win them from an administrative judge. (The number of special education cases heard by administrative judges has exploded in recent years, with nearly 20,000 alone last school year.)

The delays mean children may go without the transportation, physical therapy, counseling, and tutoring services they’re entitled to — or their parents may be forced to pay out of their own pocket. In other cases, families may not receive tuition payments for private schools they are owed after successfully arguing their children could not be properly served in the city’s public schools.

Implementing orders from administrative judges on time has been the subject of litigation for more than two decades. Under a 2007 settlement, the Education Department was required to implement orders for services or payments within 35 days — unless the judge, also known as an impartial hearing officer, approves a longer timeline.

The city’s track record of complying with those time frames has long been abysmal, according to independent audits. Orders for services like speech therapy or counseling were implemented on time in just 9.5% out of nearly 3,400 cases, according to the most recent data from October 2023 to January 2024. Just 1% of the nearly 5,300 payment orders were fulfilled on time over the same time frame, which includes the initial period after the 2023 court order took effect. (The Education Department has paid about $39 million for regular audits over the last 14 years.)

The audits are reported on a significant lag, and Education Department officials said they are working with the court monitor to make more recent data available. Nicole Brownstein, an agency spokesperson, said the city has made some progress implementing the order.

“We have completed most of the obligations related to process improvements, staffing increases, and technology upgrades, and we are currently working on rolling out the new technology system,” she wrote in an email. Officials have spent $63 million so far to comply with the court order, she added. That figure includes $10.6 million for audits over the past two years and $1.9 million in fees for the court monitor, whose work began four years ago.

Major elements of the order remain unmet

A root cause of the delays in special education services and payments was that the office overseeing the process relied on outdated methods and technology, according to a report from the court appointed monitor, also known as a special master.

David Irwin of Thru Consulting LLC, who was appointed as the special master, found that the office relied on handwritten forms and laborious data-entry practices that involve “simply copying text from one place to another.”

As part of the court order, the city agreed to modernize its systems, hire more staff to process special education orders, and set up a hotline families could call for updates on the status of their cases among other changes.

Irwin told Chalkbeat the Education Department is making some progress, including adding more than 50 staffers to help process cases. But many more tasks remain in limbo. The hotline for families is not yet up and running, meaning parents typically have to send emails into what often feels like “a black hole,” Irwin said.

And one of the biggest technological overhauls that would help streamline the process of implementing special education orders is not set to launch until December, a timeline that Irwin’s report suggests may not be feasible.

“My team remains concerned about the tight timelines and little buffer time to absorb issues that may come up,” Irwin wrote, adding that he was encouraged by the Education Department’s commitment to the project.

The deadlines outlined in the court order were “aspirational” in many cases, Irwin acknowledged in an interview, though he added that “I’m not making any excuses for them.”

Some observers expressed deep frustration that the process has not yet yielded clear results after two years.

Additional court oversight has “failed to make any significant inroad into the NYC public schools’ pervasive failure to deliver the services and programs that administrative law judges order them to provide,” John Farago, a hearing officer who previously adjudicated special education cases in New York City, wrote in an email.

In the meantime, many students are missing out on essential special education services.

“Each day of delay,” Farago said, “is a day of lost and irreplaceable educational opportunity that cannot ever be recaptured.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify the timeframe of the special master’s services.

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

Dan Weisberg on literacy, migrants, and his decision to step down as NYC’s No. 2 school official

2025-07-24T22:20:25+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

He shepherded the mayor’s curriculum overhauls, pushed to open 28 new schools, and even helped elevate Melissa Aviles-Ramos as chief of the nation’s largest school system.

Now, after three and a half years as the Education Department’s second-in-command, Dan Weisberg is stepping down.

Weisberg oversees a massive portfolio that includes Adams’ biggest education initiatives, including reading and math curriculum mandates known as NYC Reads and Solves, and a pathways program to connect more students to career options before graduation.

“Dan was at the center of all our critical work,” Aviles-Ramos said in a statement. “He has led with integrity, dedication, boldness, and care, pushing relentlessly for innovation and equity in our schools.”

Weisberg has also amassed his share of critics, including advocates who point out that the Education Department has not prioritized school integration — and it has advanced policies that they fear will worsen the problem. He got his start in the Education Department as a labor negotiator during the Bloomberg administration, often clashing with the teachers union, which initially raised alarms about his leadership but more recently has praised some of his work expanding teacher training.

As Weisberg prepares to leave the department next month, Chalkbeat caught up with him about his assessment of the school system’s health, mixed results of the city’s reading curriculum overhaul, how immigration crackdowns could affect enrollment, and what he makes of Zohran Mamdani’s education promises.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You’ve been the second in command at the Education Department since Eric Adams took office and you previously mentioned that you’d stay in the position as long as the mayor and the chancellor wanted you in the role. I’m wondering what changed?

Nothing changed. It was a good time to transition — it being the summer, the school year has ended. Honestly, this is not a job you ever want to do if you’re not feeling like you have the energy to give it 100%. It does take a lot out of you, and it’s time for me to get a little bit of downtime. I feel very good about where we are with the work, and feel very good about the strength of the team, so that made it a good time to transition.

What is your zoomed out assessment of the school system compared with four years ago? When the mayor came into office, he spoke pretty passionately about how it was unacceptable that large majorities of Black and Latino children weren’t proficient in reading and math. There’s been some progress under your watch, but it’s still the case that more than 60% of those kids are not considered proficient on state tests.

I appreciate you raising the mayor’s words and former Chancellor Banks’ words which I think was really important. That needed to happen before we could make some pretty fundamental changes.

I may have more perspective after I’ve gotten a chance to take a breath. But what I would say is that kind of problem where we are not serving the large majority, frankly, of our students well academically is not going to be solved by tweaks. We really needed some fundamental changes in the way we approach teaching reading and math. Even though we haven’t really launched it yet, we have work to do when it comes to all of our core academic subjects.

As we said right from the start, this is not something that’s going to show immediate returns on test scores, but it will show returns. And so I would say, if we stay the course with this general approach to curriculum instruction, you know, eight years from now, we will see steady, significant gains. And a much higher percentage of our students, including our Black and Hispanic students, our students with disabilities, our multilingual learners, all doing much, much better than they’re doing now.

If you’re thinking on an eight-year time horizon, that could be multiple mayoral administrations from now. So far, it seems like the evidence is mixed: state test scores went down a little bit last year [in reading] — the screener data is maybe a little more encouraging, but not definitive. People are going to have to make decisions about this program before maybe you would like them to. Are you worried about that?

Political transitions are a fact of life. And this is not a surprise to us. The way you ensure sustainability across administrations is to do a really good job at implementation and a really good job at listening to people in the field and adjusting. And I think the chancellor deserves tremendous credit for doing that. She’s got her ear very close to the ground with teachers in the classroom, with principals, with superintendents, with our union partners. Ultimately, if the people in the field doing the hard work of educating our kids think this is the right approach — very, very unlikely that a new administration, whether it’s a second term, whether it’s a new administration, are going to alter that.

What are some of the biggest goals that you came in excited about that you didn’t make as much progress on as you hoped?

You’re always hoping for very rapid progress, but that doesn’t usually happen. When Chancellor Banks and I and the team were preparing during the transition to enter office, one of the things that I was pretty strenuous in advising is it’s very important, particularly in a big complex system like this one, to have a very short list of priorities. There’s limited capacity, there’s limited time in the day, there’s limited attention, there’s limited budget. If you have a list of 10 big priorities, in my view, you might as well have a list of a million or zero.

Our focus has been very clear: New York City Reads, New York City Solves, student pathways. Truly in all of those areas, I feel like we both did the foundational work, the building blocks are in place, and have made progress in implementation. [It would] be wonderful if we could say we already have 100,000 kids getting career-connected learning opportunities connected to specific pathways. We’re not there yet. We didn’t expect to be there yet. I’m not disappointed by that, but I’m certainly eager for us to continue to scale that work.

This is not just me saying, ‘Hey, everything’s wonderful.’ We very specifically, strategically kept a short list of priorities. And I think in part, as a result of that, we were able to see real, tangible progress in each of those areas.

If Zohran Mamdani becomes mayor, his top youth-focused agenda item is free child care. What do you make of that proposal? And as someone who has worked in a big, complicated system what would it actually take to stand that up?

I can’t imagine anybody who’s mayor or aspiring to be mayor of New York City, not seeing access to child care is a big issue. It’s a great ambition.

We have seen with providing 3-K and pre-K, it can be hugely positive. It is very difficult to implement. We depend on a pretty complicated system of providers. It’s not just, you know, our schools, which is complicated enough to manage, but it’s many of our [community based organizations], and they need to be at the heart of this system. And I think if the system gets extended to younger ages those CBOs are going to be a critical part of that as well. And that’s just a really complex system to try to manage well. We’ve seen this, particularly with 3-K, I think we made a lot of progress there, it is very difficult for any school system serving any age to respond quickly to changes in demand.

Mamdani has also proposed to end mayoral control in its current form. Do you think there’s an appetite in Albany to end the governance system that has existed since the Bloomberg administration?

Yeah, yes. It would be a massive mistake to end mayoral control. What’s the old quote? Democracy is the worst system except for all the others.

And I get it, people have a lot of frustration with our current governance system because anything that’s wrong with the system gets laid at the feet of this governance system. I came up through the public schools under a very different governance system, and it was far, far worse. The student outcomes were worse, the student experiences were worse, the family experiences were way worse, the Byzantine bureaucratic structure. I know we have our problems with bureaucracy, but it is nothing compared to what was when you had a fragmented system.

Former Chancellor Banks called the influx of migrant students a “godsend” for helping stabilize enrollment. I’m wondering if you’re seeing any evidence now of those students leaving and whether there’s a danger that federal immigration policy could drive down immigrant student enrollment?

I wouldn’t say we’re seeing evidence of that at a system level. We’re not seeing big swings — reductions in enrollment. Certainly anecdotally, that is happening in places. And it’s a huge worry.

Immigration is not just the lifeblood of our city and and always has been, but it’s the lifeblood of our school system. We had a significant influx of new New Yorkers over the last several years, but we have steady immigration and new families coming into our school system all the time. And so even without the influx, if we see major decreases in the number of new families coming to New York City [and] enrolling their kids, that’s going to have a very negative effect on our schools. So I absolutely worry about that. I’m talking about legal immigration, where it’s just families coming into the country. We’ve been blessed with wave after wave of immigration, even aside from, you know, the big influx that happened the last couple of years. And we need that to continue.

One of the biggest things the next mayor is going to have to manage is the class size mandate. Zohran Mandani said recently he thought that the Education Department hadn’t been taking the mandate seriously enough. There’s been some critique about whether the city has done enough to plan to get to 100% compliance and make it clear how that’s going to happen. I’m wondering what your response is to those critiques? A big component of the mandate is going to be to hire thousands of new teachers and also curious whether those teachers exist?

The critiques about us not taking it seriously are a head scratcher. We have complied. Some of these critics may not like the way the law is set up, but the law is very clear. We have to get the 20% [compliance] and then an incremental 20% every year. As you know, we have done that, and we’re going to do that for next year as well. We have done that in part through the infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars. I don’t know what indicates more seriousness than allocating significant budget to an issue.

We have some mechanisms to increase our pipeline. We have done that primarily through our alternative certification programs, our teaching fellows programs, which have been at times in the past much bigger. We’ve done that this year, doubled the class. We can work with our higher ed partners to see if they can expand, but it is going to be a stress and a strain.

We need to expand the talent pipeline. And the best way to do that, in my view, is creating a really robust paraprofessional teacher career pathway. But suffice it to say, if we are in a situation where we’re going to need to hire, call it 7,000 teachers a year versus 4,000, then we’re going to have to do things differently. We’re going to have to innovate. The solutions to that right now are not in place.

Another huge priority has been opening new schools. Many of those have been screened programs and the administration has made the argument that’s to give families more high-quality options in high-need neighborhoods. At the same time, enrollment is declining over the last several years, so that could lead to a greater number of unsustainably small schools, and it could also lead to more academic segregation. How did you weigh those trade-offs?

The guiding light for us is around community demand. The fact that we opened [Bard High School Early College Bronx], and [Bard High School Early College Brooklyn] was not because the chancellors and I said, ‘Hey we think it’d be a cool idea to open an early college school in these areas.’ It’s because there was demand. We can be guided by our own opinions about what families should want. Some school system leaders have led that way, and if the people we serve don’t agree with you, you’re going to be speaking to an empty room.

Birth rates are dropping. As you say, there may be some variation in immigration patterns. There’s still lots and lots of New Yorkers who choose not to enroll their kids in New York City public schools. In some cases, they decide to leave because they’re not getting what they want from the school system.

This is a longer conversation maybe we’ll get to have at some point — the idea that, hey, we’re going to take the high performing kids and put them in certain schools, and that’s going to leave low performing kids in other schools. You remember that LeBron James commercial where he’s [talking about] kids from humble beginnings? My hope is that there’s no more humble beginnings if we get really good at catching kids up, which is, by the way, the next New York City Reads and Solves challenge that we are taking on in a big way.

We have to get away from the scarcity paradigm, which is there’s only a static number of high performing kids, there’s a huge number of low performing kids, there’s a static number of good schools and a static number of bad schools. If we get really good at catching kids up, then whether you’re in a screened school, whether you’re an arts oriented school, a science oriented school, whether you’re just into the comprehensive high school, you’re going to get a good, solid education.

I do have to ask what you’re planning to do next.

Well, that’s probably the easiest question you’ve asked, because right now, I’m going to take some downtime. I’m going to spend a little time with family and just taking a breath, and I will be back in the fight somewhere, but I don’t know where at this point.

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

All NYC public schools must use city-approved programs to help struggling readers next year

2025-07-17T21:50:54+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Ruby Miller, a Brooklyn mom, was optimistic when the city announced plans two years ago to shake up its approach to reading instruction.

But despite Mayor Eric Adams’ signature literacy overhaul known as NYC Reads, which requires all elementary schools to use one of three curriculums, Miller’s 8-year-old daughter has struggled.

“She’ll read something [and] you’ll ask her, ‘Who was the main character here?,’ and she still seems kind of lost,” Miller said. “As far as the comprehension portion of things, I don’t feel like she has improved.”

At Miller’s request, her daughter will repeat the third grade next year and is transferring to a new public school geared toward students with reading challenges.

Now, city officials are rolling out more aggressive plans to catch up students like Miller’s daughter, requiring schools to intervene when students slip behind their peers in reading.

Schools have long provided targeted support for students who are behind academically, though city officials said that quality control and training has long been scattershot.

Ruby Miller

Beginning next school year, all of the city’s public schools — from elementary to high school — must pick from a list of at least nine city-approved intervention programs designed to help struggling readers, according to documents obtained by Chalkbeat. The city hopes “all NYC students become thriving readers and writers by 2035,” the document states. (The full list appears at the end of this story.)

“Gett[ing] really good at catching students up [is] the next New York City Reads and Solves challenge that we are taking on in a big way,” First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg said in an interview, referring to the city’s reading and math curriculum overhauls.

First literacy mandate to directly affect high schools

Intervention programs can involve a range of approaches. In elementary schools, for example, teachers may pull students into small groups to go over phonics concepts from earlier grade levels to reinforce the relationships between sounds and letters. In high school, some campuses use online platforms to help build vocabulary and comprehension skills.

The push to standardize interventions represents one of the first literacy initiatives under Adams that will directly affect high schools. Many older students lack basic reading skills, and experts have long warned that any comprehensive approach to addressing literacy gaps must include high schools.

A subset of schools, including campuses that were in the first phase of the reading curriculum mandate and some middle schools that are also making curriculum changes, will face additional expectations about how often they work with struggling students as part of a pilot program.

Based on a slew of assessments, including reading screeners students typically take three times a year, those schools will be expected to deliver struggling readers extra instruction four to five times a week, according to a document shared with educators that was obtained by Chalkbeat. Students should be re-evaluated every six to eight weeks to determine if they continue to need extra help.

Principals welcome focus on struggling readers, raise logistical questions

Some literacy experts praised the city’s focus on students who are behind and emphasized that training will be an essential ingredient to the initiative’s success.

“It’s one thing to select reading intervention programs, and it’s another thing to make sure you have highly trained reading interventionists,” said Katie Pace Miles, a literacy expert at Brooklyn College who has trained reading teachers and launched a tutoring program.

Still, it’s unclear how significant the changes will be on many campuses. City officials did not say how many schools already use intervention programs that are on the approved list, noting they are surveying schools about their current programs. Officials did not respond to a question about whether the cost of switching to a new program would come out of individual school budgets or how much funding the city is committing to the effort.

Principals largely applauded the focus on struggling readers. Still, some wondered if layering on additional programs is the best approach.

One principal worried that it could overwhelm educators who are already dealing with other curriculum shifts. The principal said reviewing material using their existing curriculums and phonics programs was sufficient.

Others were reserving judgement until more details became available while expressing some concern about how it would fit into their existing schedules.

“It’s a logistical question of who is working with those kids if they’re being pulled out of class” to complete intervention programs, said a Brooklyn high school principal who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to comment publicly.

Educators also raised questions about how city officials decided which intervention programs to approve. A department spokesperson said only that the process was comprehensive and officials used a rubric to make decisions, but did not provide specifics.

Katharine Debenedictis, the longtime principal of P.S. 198 in Manhattan, said her local district has been encouraging schools to beef up their intervention program for years. The latest mandate does not feel like a major shift, she said, as her school already uses programs on the approved list.

Her school already sets aside three intervention periods a week for reading and math where students get more individualized help. More accelerated students might read independently or play an academic-focused game during that time.

“I feel like the public school system is more clear on expectations for literacy instruction now than I’ve ever seen before,” she said.

Still, she acknowledged that making time for intervention means that every minute of each period must have a purpose, which can mean less time for other activities.

“My most skilled teachers are the ones that don’t allow things like community building, social emotional learning [and] joy to leave the classroom because there doesn’t feel like there’s as much time specifically carved out for that,” Debenedictis said. “Balancing all the priorities is definitely the thing that I think we’re all grappling with the most.”

Here is the full list of approved intervention programs, according to a document shared with educators.

S.P.I.R.E. Foundations: Sounds Sensible
S.P.I.R.E.
Phonics for Reading
REWARDS Intermediate
Rewards Secondary/REWARDS Plus
STARI
Wilson Reading System
Just Words
Aprendo Leyendo (for use in dual language classrooms)

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

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

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

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

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.

NYC reading scores reveal some progress. Is Eric Adams’ curriculum mandate working?

2025-07-07T21:15:35+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Mayor Eric Adams’ flagship education initiative, shaking up New York City’s approach to reading instruction, has yet to answer a fundamental question: Is it working?

City officials pointed to a new data point last week showing that elementary reading scores are ticking up year-over-year, according to short assessments, or screeners, that students across the city take three times a year to help their teachers gauge if students need extra help. Several experts, however, said the screener data should be interpreted with caution.

The figures show that 41.6% of children in grades K-5 scored above the national median this spring, a 2.5 percentage point increase compared with spring of 2024. Schools that were required to begin making curriculum changes two years ago saw slightly larger gains than schools that adopted new programs last school year.

Top education officials contend the figures represent early evidence that the literacy mandate known as NYC Reads, which requires all elementary schools to use one of three city-approved reading curriculums, is taking root. The new curriculums are meant to align with longstanding research about how students learn to read, known as the science of reading.

“It’s really, really promising news, because what it’s showing is progress,” First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg told the Daily News.

City officials also released the results of math screeners, which show that 38.4% of students in grades K-5 scored above the national median this spring, a 3.2 percentage point increase compared with the previous year.

In a press release, Adams and schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos linked those gains to a math curriculum shakeup called NYC Solves, which requires schools to adopt city-approved math programs. But NYC Solves does not include students in elementary grades. An Education Department spokesperson noted that some elementary districts have begun changing math curriculums even though there is no requirement to do so through NYC Solves.

The scores come at a delicate moment as the current administration works to expand the reading and math curriculum overhauls. If Adams does not win reelection in November, decisions about the curriculum mandate, known as NYC Reads, will fall to a new mayor who could change course if the program is not seen as a success. Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, previously said NYC Reads is “an important step in the right direction” while noting teachers may need more leeway to implement it as they see fit.

Meanwhile, experts said the screener data can’t definitively show whether the curriculum changes are taking hold.

“These results are good news, but it is too early to determine whether this is a useful step towards the intended goal or irrelevant noise,” said Timothy Shanahan, a reading expert and professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, who reviewed the data at Chalkbeat’s request.

Shanahan added that scores were ticking up on the screeners even before the curriculum changes were implemented. “I would be uncomfortable claiming these [curriculum] changes were the cause of the gains,” he wrote, noting that other factors such as changes in student attendance could affect the scores.

Screeners are generally less comprehensive than state exams students must take every year, according to literacy experts. They are designed to help teachers quickly identify which students need extra support. The assessments in grades K-2, from a company called Acadience, can be administered by a teacher in minutes. In higher grades, students take adaptive computer-based assessments, meaning the questions change based on whether a student is answering them correctly.

Adrea Truckenmiller, an associate professor at Michigan State University who has studied literacy screening, said the assessments often correlate with state test results, especially in upper elementary grades, offering an early signal of whether students are on the right track. They also include younger students while state exams only assess students in grades 3-8.

“Reading screeners are imperfect but they are the best thing we have,” Truckenmiller said.

The data show students in those early grades saw an increase of 3.2 percentage points year over year, while those in grades 3-5 had a 1.7 percentage point gain.

Similar to state test results, the screener data shows deep disparities between student groups. About 56% of white and Asian American students scored above the national median in reading compared with about 29% of Latino and 35% of Black children. Only 19% of students with disabilities and 13% of English language learners scored above the national median.

Even as city officials hope that the screeners are an early indication of success, that has yet to show up on state assessments. During the 2023-24 school year, student reading scores declined slightly, with larger drops in districts that were first to change curriculums. City officials described the results as an “implementation dip” as teachers were still adapting to the new curriculums. Last school year’s state test scores are expected to be released later this summer.

Aaron Pallas, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College who has studied school performance, said the state tests offer a deeper picture of student achievement, though he noted that a variety of factors can influence those scores.

“As usual, it’s the complex challenge of trying to paint a picture when there are many different parts of a puzzle,” Pallas said. “The screening assessments are one bit of evidence.”

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

Zohran Mamdani wants to end mayoral control of NYC schools. Here’s what that could mean.

2025-07-01T20:14:52+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Zohran Mamdani has not sketched out a plan to manage the nation’s largest school system. But the Queens assemblyman, who won a decisive victory for the Democratic mayoral nomination on Tuesday, has one big idea: giving himself less power.

Since 2002, the state has granted the mayor of New York City almost complete authority over the public school system. The mayor unilaterally selects the schools chancellor and appoints the majority of the Panel for Educational Policy, a board that votes on school closures, contracts, and other major changes to Education Department regulations.

Most mayoral candidates this year said they support mayoral control, though some suggested tweaks. Every mayor has lobbied state lawmakers in Albany for extensions to mayoral control since it was enacted more than two decades ago. Mamdani, a 33-year-old Democratic socialist, has vowed to be an exception to that rule.

“Zohran supports an end to mayoral control and envisions a system instead in which parents, students, educators and administrators work together,” his campaign website states. In its place, he calls for a “co-governance” model that empowers existing organizations, such as elected parent councils and local school teams that include administrators, teachers, and caregivers.

Mamdani’s plan would represent a fundamental shift in school governance at a time when the system faces many pressing issues, including elevated rates of chronic absenteeism, declining enrollment, and persistent gaps in student achievement.

“That’s a signal that he’s thinking about this in a very different way than the typical mayoral hopeful,” said Jonathan Collins, a professor of political science and education at Columbia University Teachers College. “Not too many politicians have been in the business of giving power away.”

Mamdani secured 56% of the vote in the Democratic primary, according to unofficial ranked choice results released on Tuesday. That momentum could carry him through a general election dominated by Democratic voters. But he still faces a crowded field, with Mayor Eric Adams, Independent Jim Walden, Republican Curtis Sliwa, and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who received 44% of votes in the primary. (Though Cuomo will be on the ballot, he has not said whether he will mount a campaign.)

Debate over mayoral control to start again in 2026

Whoever enters City Hall in January will quickly be thrust into the perennial debate about mayoral control, as the state law granting that authority is up for renewal in the middle of 2026. State lawmakers have shown some willingness to tweak mayoral control in recent years, granting only short renewals and adding new members to the education panel (though the mayor retains the majority).

Supporters of the model contend that it allows for the mayor to execute a clear policy vision for the city’s schools and makes it obvious to the public who is responsible for the system’s performance. The prior system of decentralized school boards was rife with corruption and patronage, they argue.

Critics contend that mayoral control makes it too difficult for parents, students, and educators to have a say over how schools are run and that mayoral elections every four years are a blunt accountability tool, as other issues often squeeze out education. They also note that Adams’ hired or promoted some of his relatives into senior government jobs. His schools chancellor, David Banks, retired amid a federal corruption investigation, though he was not accused of wrongdoing.

Mamdani has not articulated a clear vision for the city’s schools and said little about what alternatives to mayoral control he favors. His campaign did not respond to a request for specifics. Brad Lander, a mayoral candidate who cross-endorsed with Mamdani, also proposed changes to mayoral control to give City Council the power to weigh in on the appointment of the schools chancellor.

John Liu, a Queens Democrat who chairs the state Senate’s New York City education committee, said he could imagine a range of possibilities for Mamdani’s “co-governance” approach. He said it could involve transitioning to an elected school board similar to Chicago, or allowing other elected officials power to make additional appointments to the Panel for Educational Policy. That board has 24 members, a majority of whom are appointed by the mayor.

“It’s great to hear [Mamdani] discussing new ideas,” said Liu, who endorsed Mamdani and said more debate is needed about various approaches to running the system.

Still, Liu sounded a note of skepticism that the Democratic nominee would relinquish control of the school system. “What’s said on the campaign trail is not always what happens once you become mayor,” he said.

Mamdani’s ‘co-governance’ proposal draws enthusiasm and concern

Heather Lewis, a professor of art and design education at Pratt who has written extensively about the community control movement in New York, wondered whether Mamdani might give local community education councils more influence, a move she supports. Those bodies, which represent 32 local districts and four citywide councils, could have more authority to supervise the superintendents who oversee principals, she said, a power the local boards held before mayoral control.

Mamdani is “trying to figure out how to co-govern” — something no one has tried to do since Bloomberg implemented mayoral control, she said. “That’s exciting.”

Other observers were skeptical of deferring policy decisions to the local level. For one, turnout in local parent council elections has historically been dismal, with some council members winning with just a handful of votes, meaning those groups may not fully represent their communities.

Mamdani could also be forced to confront local decisions he may disagree with; Manhattan’s District 2, for instance, passed a controversial resolution in 2024 calling for a review of the city’s policy of allowing transgender girls to join girls’ sports teams.

“Is Mamdani really willing to go down roads like that?” said David Bloomfield, a professor of education, law, and public policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center.

Bloomfield, who previously served as the general counsel for the city’s Board of Education before mayoral control, added that Mamdani’s pitch for “co-governance” may be a winning campaign message because it has a populist appeal to make the system more democratic.

“It is a signal of a mindset more than an operational plan,” he said.

Other observers said they are open to changes to mayoral control but wished Mamdani was clearer about how changing the governance structure could produce better results for students.

“Co-sharing power [is] a process, not an outcome,” said David Adams, the CEO of Urban Assembly, an organization that supports a network of 22 public schools across the city. “It’s like okay, cool, but to what end?”

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

Why one NYC teen chose a cybersecurity apprenticeship over after-school hangouts

2025-06-20T16:25:42+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Shortly after Addison Wang settled in at his desk on a recent Tuesday in a windowless room at the Education Department’s information technology office, an alert landed in his inbox.

It said an email was circulating among department employees directing them to a potentially malicious website. His task was to determine if anyone had clicked on it.

Wang is not a traditional employee at the school system’s Division of Instructional and Information Technology, the department that helps safeguard digital infrastructure for more than one million students and staff.

He’s a 18-year-old senior at Chelsea Career and Technical Education High School.

Over the past two school years, Wang has spent about four hours a day, four days a week, working for the Education Department, often leaving his Manhattan school midday to hop a subway to its Downtown Brooklyn technology office.

Wang is one of 389 student apprentices across the city’s public schools who split their school days between traditional classes and job sites, part of a growing initiative that city officials hope will help ease students into careers with solid wages at companies like Amazon or Accenture, or even city government. The average starting wage among apprentices is $17.90 per hour; Addison earns $16.50, the city’s minimum.

The program, called the Career Readiness and Modern Youth Apprenticeship, is part of a broader push under Mayor Eric Adams to give students access to paid work opportunities for in-demand fields well before graduation — though city officials have struggled to scale it up as quickly as promised.

In 2022, the Education Department vowed to place 3,000 students in apprenticeships within three years. So far, only 528 students have participated.

Wang said he was drawn to the apprenticeship because “I was really wondering how jobs and workplaces differ from my imagination.”

On that Tuesday afternoon, the teen quickly launched into troubleshooting mode to sort out if any employees were exposed to the suspicious message. After a little trial-and-error and some prompting from a supervisor who peered over his shoulder, Wang ran a search of the city’s email system.

Only eight Education Department employees received the scammy message. No one had clicked on it.

Apprenticeship’s time commitment can be a sticking point

At first, Wang was skeptical of the apprenticeship program.

He knew it would be difficult to participate in after-school activities or get home in time for family dinners. His work day doesn’t wrap up until 5 p.m, and the commute home to Staten Island involves multiple subway lines and a bus — taking well over an hour. It has also threatened to complicate his social life.

“A lot of friends go and hang out after school,” Wang said, “but then you can’t because you have work.”

The training requirements gave him pause, too. Apprenticeship candidates must participate in a course to help prepare resumes and polish interview skills, and they compete for slots among students across the city without a guarantee an employer will hire them. Later, they attend a summer program to learn about professionalism and tools like Excel and Outlook, which comes with a $1,800 stipend.

The financial incentive proved to be a key selling point. Wang uses a portion of his wages to help pay household bills to support his parents who immigrated from China more than 20 years ago. His mom works as a nail spa technician and his dad does freelance construction projects.

“I’m proud that I can help the family and relieve the stress,” Wang said. The rest goes toward eating out with his friends or trips.

After working as an apprentice for more than a year, Wang began to see some of the benefits of spending so much time at one job site. While some of Wang’s time goes to basic administrative functions, like assigning requests that come in to the appropriate staff member, he has been at the Education Department’s technology office long enough to participate in more complex projects.

After the office received a deluge of complaints about Chromebooks that wouldn’t connect to school Wi-Fi, Wang brought one to school to troubleshoot. The teen helped figure out that the problem had to do with the Chromebook operating system getting tangled up with the Education Department’s internet filters that block certain websites.

“He provided some really good insight on his experiences with Chromebooks,” said Jenny Wong, a leader of the security incident response team and Wang’s supervisor. “We’re like, ‘Oh my God, we never have thought of that.’”

Chelsea Career and Technical Education High School Teacher John Tebett asked Addison to present on his apprenticeship in class.

Some of Wang’s teachers have asked him to draw on his apprenticeship experience during regular classes. At Chelsea CTE, Wang is on the Cisco Networking track, which trains students how to set up computer networks and allows students to earn an industry credential by the end.

John Tebett, who teaches the Cisco sequence, asked Wang to present about his work experience to create “a direct tie-in between what he’s doing there and what we were talking about” in class, Tebett said.

To Wang, one of the most valuable aspects of the apprenticeship has had little to do with technical training. It’s learning how to negotiate with adults.

After Wang’s supervisor approved the teen to work remotely from his school building twice a week, allowing him to participate in student government, a new problem cropped up. He needs his phone to communicate with his job site, but his school recently instituted a cellphone ban that requires students to put their phones in locked fabric pouches all day.

The school’s principal was reluctant to grant an exception. But Wang persisted, and they ultimately reached a compromise: The school offered up a velcro pouch that Wang can open himself when he’s working on apprenticeship tasks.

Advocating for himself to adults is “definitely something I’ve become comfortable with,” Wang said. “I still see, like, teenagers in high school struggle with [that].”

NYC has yet to fulfill promise to dramatically scale up apprenticeship program

Expanding work-based learning is one of Adams’ top education priorities. And he visited Chelsea CTE in February, flanked by Wang, to highlight the apprenticeship program. But the city has struggled to reach as many students as initially promised.

A department spokesperson said they are still aiming to reach their 3,000-student target, though they did not offer a timeframe. Officials said they are working to adjust the program to account for needs in various industries, such as differing expectations about how long it should take to master the relevant work skills.

Experts noted that apprenticeships have historically been difficult for schools to pull off because they require identifying employers willing to take on teens and enough supervision and training to ensure it’s a meaningful experience.

“Linking high school students with workforce career prep is hard,” said John Sludden, a research analyst at New York University’s Research Alliance, which is working with the group MDRC to study New York City’s CTE programs. “Schools aren’t built for this,” he added, “employers aren’t built for it.”

At Chelsea CTE, staff previously made cold calls to find companies willing to accept students for work-based learning experiences. Now, the city is leaning more on intermediaries like CareerWise, a nonprofit that is heavily involved in lining up job sites and helping schools manage the apprenticeship program. That “has taken a big load off of schools,” said Principal Jaivelle Reed.

Addison Wang, left, and his supervisor, Jenny Wong, a leader of DIIT's security incident response team.

Finding students who are willing to participate remains a challenge and the number of apprentices at the school has incrementally grown. About 12 students on the campus are participating. Students often bristle at the time commitment and those who aren’t on an accelerated path to graduation often can’t afford to miss four hours of school several times a week while still earning credits and passing state exit exams.

For those students, “my concern is that something will have to give: either the academics or the apprenticeship,” Reed said. “I don’t want either to suffer.”

Still, Reed said there are success stories he hopes will entice more students to join. After one of the school’s seniors completed an apprenticeship at Accenture last year, the company offered her a $70,000 a year job as a full stack developer. Although the student initially planned to go to college, she accepted the job. (Accenture also offered to subsidize college if she chooses to attend, Reed said.)

City officials hope that the apprenticeships give more students the option of launching a solid career without feeling obligated to attend college, though many jobs in lucrative fields still require a degree. Several districts across the country, including New York City, are moving away from the idea that college is the right path for everyone.

For his part, Wang wants to focus on college and career simultaneously.

He’s planning to enroll at The City College of New York honors program to study computer science, but is also not quite ready to leave the Education Department’s technology division. The apprenticeship program gives students the opportunity to continue for a year after graduation.

This fall, Wang is once again planning to juggle school and work.

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

Lengthy suspensions often violate NYC students’ constitutional rights, lawsuit claims

2025-05-23T18:11:22+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

When her daughter was suspended last spring for having vape pens, including one with marijuana, Brooklyn mom Rubi F. thought the family had a good reason to fight the case: She claimed a classmate slipped them into her bag.

At a hearing to determine if the allegation was true, the school didn’t present concrete evidence about the pens’ contents, according to a legal filing. But the hearing officer still sided with the school, finding the eighth grader had “liquid THC in a vape pen” and was “in possession of drug paraphernalia.”

“They just go by what [the school staff] said,” Rubi said in Spanish through an interpreter. “It’s very unfair.” (Rubi asked that her last name be withheld to protect her family’s privacy.)

A lawsuit filed this week on behalf of Rubi and two other families contends that New York City schools often suspend students without solid evidence, in violation of their due process rights under the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit could have significant implications for thousands of students every year. If the suit is successful, it would become harder for schools to remove children from class for long stretches.

“All the school has to do is show some piece of evidence that makes the hearing officer feel like this could have happened,” said Michaela Shuchman, a lawyer at Legal Services NYC, an organization that represents families in suspension proceedings and which filed the lawsuit. “It really demoralizes [families].”

When children are removed from school for six days or more, known as a superintendent suspension, families are entitled to a hearing where they can present evidence, call witnesses, and challenge the school’s version of events. A hearing officer determines which facts are true and makes a discipline recommendation.

But the standard of proof at those hearings — “substantial and competent evidence” — requires less than a 50% chance that a student did what they are accused of, legal experts said.

The suit, filed in federal district court, argues that the city should use a standard known as “preponderance of the evidence,” which would require slightly more than 50% certainty. At least 19 states use the preponderance standard, according to Shuchman, including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut.

Lengthy suspensions can seriously deprive students, suit claims

Some school staff have noted that longer punishments are typically reserved for serious misconduct and making it harder to remove students can lead to more chaotic classrooms. But the lawsuit’s backers contend that a higher burden of proof is appropriate given evolving research on the impact of lengthy suspensions.

One study focused on New York City found that suspensions can lead students to pass fewer classes, increase their risk of dropping out, and make it less likely they will graduate. Other research generally shows suspensions are linked to worse academic outcomes. Though students who are removed from class are entitled to instruction at alternate learning centers, attendance is often spotty and teaching can be disconnected from what students were previously learning at their home school.

The punishments can also contribute to students getting entangled in the criminal justice system and limit access to free meals and health care, as schools have increasingly become hubs of social services, the suit claims.

Rubi’s daughter, who has a disability, did not receive all of her special education counseling services when she was assigned to an alternate learning center. She was sometimes sent home with worksheets immediately after arriving, according to the suit.

“The impact was so huge on her” after the suspension, Rubi said. “She was a totally different person. She became very angry all the time.” The mom now has to drive her daughter to school because she will otherwise refuse to go.

The principal of I.S. 96 Seth Low, the school that suspended Rubi’s daughter, did not reply to an email seeking comment. (Schools are allowed to discipline students for merely possessing a vape, although they should not typically be suspended unless drugs are involved, according to the city’s discipline code.)

The impact of lengthy suspensions is unevenly distributed. Nearly 45% of the 6,231 long-term suspensions last year involved Black students, and a similar proportion were issued to students with disabilities. Only about 20% of the city’s students are Black, while just 22% have a disability.

Chalkbeat reported this week that the city has failed for years to follow rules designed to protect students with disabilities from long-term punishments if the behavior in question is related to their disability.

An Education Department spokesperson referred questions about the lawsuit to the city’s Law Department, which declined to comment.

Advocates who represent students in suspension hearings have long raised concerns about the standard of proof used in those proceedings. In a 2019 Chalkbeat essay, one advocate cited a case where his client was suspended for punching another student. The suspension was upheld based on an account from a school dean — even though the student who was hit testified that someone else was responsible.

Multiple legal experts said the serious consequences of long-term suspensions merit a higher standard of proof.

Under the current standard, “they’re giving a lot of deference” to schools, said Cara McClellan, an associate practice professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania. Using the preponderance standard would be “a step toward making it a fair and equal adversarial process,” she said.

Other legal experts said the lawsuit may be a longshot. Under current U.S. Supreme Court precedent, students have a right to notice of a suspension and a hearing, but the court did not articulate a specific standard of proof.

Using the higher preponderance standard is a “commonsense argument,” said David Bloomfield, a professor of education, law, and public policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. But he said that might not be enough to convince a judge that the current standard is unconstitutional.

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

NYC schools fail to protect students with disabilities from lengthy suspensions

2025-05-21T20:05:14+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

After trading taunts with a classmate one morning in March 2023, Tristan threw a punch that busted the other student’s lip. A teacher who intervened wound up with a bloody nose and swollen lip in the ensuing scuffle.

Then a ninth grader at Brooklyn’s Medgar Evers College Preparatory School, Tristan later took responsibility for starting the fight. “I hit him first — that’s where I was wrong,” said the teen, who requested his last name be withheld for privacy reasons.

School officials suspended Tristan for more than three weeks, among the longest punishments typically allowed under city guidelines. But while the case seemed open and shut, an impartial hearing officer later ruled that the lengthy suspension violated the teen’s rights.

Tristan, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, received special education services to address impulse control and anger management. But the school failed to provide numerous counseling sessions that were supposed to help him learn to regulate his emotions, the hearing officer found.

During a legally required meeting to assess whether Tristan’s disability played a role in the fight, school staff did not consider his special education records, behavioral plan, or history of similar outbursts.

“There is no evidence that the [school’s review team] discussed any relevant documents,” wrote hearing officer Patricia Le Goff, who noted the school did not follow the required step-by-step process and Tristan’s mother was not allowed to offer her perspective. The hearing officer found that Tristan’s behavior stemmed from his disability and the school’s failure to provide counseling sessions.

Le Goff concluded that Tristan should not have received a lengthy punishment. But it was too late. Tristan had served his suspension.

New York City’s public schools routinely flout federal rules designed to prevent schools from removing children from class for long periods due to behavior related to their disabilities, a Chalkbeat investigation has found.

To examine the discipline process, Chalkbeat obtained hundreds of pages of special education records and rulings from impartial hearing officers who reviewed appeals from families whose children with disabilities received lengthy punishments. Those records — as well as interviews with more than a dozen parents, advocates, and school officials — reveal a pattern of schools failing to properly consider a student’s disability during the suspension process.

As a result, some students are serving longer punishments than legally allowed, a problem that disproportionately affects Black students. The removals can compound academic struggles among students who are often far behind their peers.

The problem stretches back years. Independent monitors who looked at nearly 1,400 suspensions between 2015 and 2018 found systemic flaws with the review process, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of findings that have not previously been made public.

“There are students who are being suspended weeks and weeks more than they should be,” said Andrew Gerst, an attorney who handled Tristan’s appeal while working at Mobilization for Justice, an organization that represents low-income families. “They should not be kept out of school one minute longer than they have to be.”

Students with disabilities are far more likely to be suspended compared with their nondisabled peers. As a group, they were removed from class 14,000 times last school year, about 39% of all removals and suspensions, despite representing 22% of the student body.

For long-term suspensions, which are less common and typically issued for significant misconduct, federal law requires an extra level of review. Schools must consider whether the behavior in question was related to a student’s disability or a failure to provide special education services guaranteed in their learning plan.

Trisha Clayton, Tristan’s mother, said the suspension review process left her feeling like the school wasn’t interested in supporting her son, and the lengthy punishment knocked him further off track. A different hearing officer later ordered the Education Department to pay for 900 hours of one-on-one tutoring in addition to other therapies to make up for inadequate special education support.

“He missed out on a lot of instructional hours,” Clayton said. “If you have a child with a learning disability or anger issues, they just don’t want to deal with those kinds of kids.”

Education Department officials said they could not comment on specific student cases, and the principal at Medgar Evers did not respond to questions.

Medgar Ever College Preparatory School suspended Tristan for nearly a month. A hearing officer later found it was improper.

School staffers on other campuses who have participated in suspension reviews said there are often good reasons to issue longer punishments, as they can help maintain a safe learning environment for other students and possibly deter future misconduct.

“Holding your teacher against the wall, or punching someone in the face, that’s not necessarily a manifestation of their disability most of the time,” said Anna Nelson, a former Bronx assistant principal who has participated in suspension reviews. “If a kid’s never been suspended before, it’s a message that really sticks with them.”

But advocates and parents say that schools often reflexively dismiss the possibility that a student’s disability played a role in their misconduct.

City education officials acknowledged in an interview with Chalkbeat that implementation of the suspension reviews can be uneven.

Over 600 Education Department staffers have been trained to make the reviews more collaborative, according to a department spokesperson, and officials have revised letters sent to families to better explain the process.

Stephanie Jemilo, a special projects director at the Education Department who oversees the training, said her team works with specific schools when they receive complaints from families. The goal is to make the meetings feel less punitive.

“It really is the process to say, ‘Hey, something‘s not working here, and let’s all come together and figure out what’s not working,’” she said.

Schools have long failed to account for students’ disabilities in the suspension process

All public schools are required to educate students with disabilities alongside their nondisabled peers to the greatest extent possible, a cornerstone of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The law is designed to prevent schools from using the discipline process to exclude those students.

When a student is suspended for more than 10 days, or if there’s a pattern of short-term removals, school staff must determine if the behavior in question was “caused by or had a direct and substantial relationship” to the student’s disability or the school’s failure to provide mandated services.

If the answer to either is yes, the student is supposed to return to class immediately, and the school is required to conduct a behavior assessment. (There are some exceptions for extreme violence, drugs, or weapons possession.)

To make that decision, school officials must hold a meeting called a “manifestation determination review” within 10 days of the student’s removal from class. Schools must include parents and at least one staff member who knows the student, including a school psychologist or guidance counselor. Families are entitled to request others to join, such as a teacher who works with their child, and they can bring an advocate.

In theory, the process should be collaborative. But the final decision rests with the student’s school, an arrangement that families and advocates say is far from objective.

“It’s like somebody gets arrested and you go to the police station and ask them to have a hearing about whether they think that they were right to arrest the person,” Gerst said. “They have every incentive to stand by their decision.”

Problems with the city’s discipline process aren’t new, according to a Chalkbeat review of legal records and city data that has not previously been made public. A 2002 class action lawsuit filed by the nonprofit group Advocates for Children claimed schools routinely used discipline to exclude students without properly considering their disability.

After a protracted legal battle, the city settled the case in 2015 and agreed to some reforms. They beefed up training and created a mandatory checklist that spells out each step of the process schools must follow.

The city was also required to check whether schools were following the rules, sending independent monitors into nearly 1,400 suspension review meetings, a sample of the meetings held between 2015 and 2018. The monitors found glaring and systemic problems, according to reports obtained by Gerst through a public records request and shared with Chalkbeat.

For example, only 44% of suspension review meetings included “effective” discussion of the incident that led to the suspension and whether it was connected to disability-related behaviors, the monitors found during the 2017-18 school year. In 20% of cases that year, there was limited or no discussion of a student’s special education learning plan, raising questions about how the review team determined whether a student’s behavior was related to a lack of services.

Nicole Tuchinda, a professor at the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law who has written about the suspension review process, called those figures “disturbing” because they reveal schools frequently did not comply with key components of the law.

“It just shows it’s a sham,” Tuchinda said.

Failing to protect students with disabilities from longer punishments could further set back a group that is already disproportionately removed from their classrooms, are far behind their peers academically, and less likely to graduate on time.

One study focusing on New York City found suspensions led to students passing fewer classes, increasing their risk of dropping out, and lowering the odds of graduating. Other research also generally suggests that suspensions are linked to worse academic outcomes. Students who are suspended for more than five days are typically sent to alternate learning centers away from their school, an environment students say is often dull or chaotic.

Problems with the suspension review process are also more likely to affect students of color, mirroring broader trends in school discipline. Between September 2021 and December 2022, more than half of the 1,825 suspension reviews involved Black students, even though only a quarter of students with disabilities are Black, city data show.

Schools were more likely to find that white students’ behavior was related to their disability compared with their Black or Latino peers, according to figures obtained by Gerst.

Education Department officials declined to provide more recent figures and there is no federal data on the suspension review process.

The responsibility for ensuring the city is complying with federal special education laws falls to the state’s Education Department. State officials found some problems with the city’s suspension review process in 2023 that required “corrective action,” according to spokesperson JP O’Hare. He did not specify the nature of the problem or what specific action was required. The state Education Department has “not received any specific ongoing concerns” about the process, O’Hare added.

It is difficult to know how widespread problems with the review process are today: The Education Department stopped sending independent monitors to the meetings after they were no longer legally required.

Melinda Andra, a longtime advocate at the Legal Aid Society who has represented families in the suspension process, said there were some signs of improvement when the monitors were in place.

Now, she said, “Things have kind of backtracked.”

‘Everybody was just on the attack’: One family felt alienated by suspension review

Danet Ferguson’s son, Malachi, faced a monthlong suspension for fighting another student in January, striking two teachers who tried to break them up. She was confident the school would conclude the 13-year-old’s ADHD and oppositional defiance disorder contributed to the incident. The school found such a link in a previous suspension this school year.

In the aftermath of the fight, Malachi was removed from class at I.S. 181 in the Bronx. Ferguson, who runs a day care, was forced to drive him to a suspension center more than an hour away. “I’m stressed out and frustrated,” Ferguson said at the time. “His grades have dropped. … I’m missing work.”

A little over a week after Malachi was removed from class, his school held a suspension review meeting to assess if his disability played a role in the fight. Ferguson and Michaela Shuchman, her legal advocate, pointed to Malachi’s history of aggression and impulsivity, which are well documented in his special education records.

Michaela Shuchman, a lawyer at Bronx Legal Services, is pushing for reforms to the suspension review process.

But school staff countered that Malachi’s behavior was premeditated. They said they could not let the incident slide without significant punishment, according to Shuchman, a lawyer at Bronx Legal Services.

“Everybody was just on the attack,” said Ferguson. “There was no one trying to listen.”

The school ruled Malachi’s disability wasn’t a major factor, allowing his suspension to continue. With Shuchman’s help, Ferguson appealed the case. A hearing officer found several procedural flaws with the school’s suspension review process.

Ferguson wanted Malachi’s counselor and one-on-one paraprofessional to attend the meeting, two people who could have helped interpret his behavior that day. But the school dismissed the request, arguing it came too late to ensure the staff could be there and wasn’t worth postponing the meeting, according to the hearing officer’s ruling.

Hearing officer Tanya White blasted the school for that decision, noting that Ferguson “had a right to designate attendees.” She added: “The two people that [Ferguson] requested would have provided a unique insight into the ultimate determination.”

It was also unclear whether the school was following Malachi’s special education learning plan, an issue that was not sufficiently discussed during the suspension review process, according to White’s ruling.

Malachi is supposed to have a full-time behavioral support aide, who had helped keep his behavior in check in the past, the hearing officer wrote. School staff claimed there was a different aide with Malachi at the time of the incident, though the hearing officer noted the aide’s presence was not included in the official incident report, nor did that person offer a witness statement or attend the suspension review meeting.

“The only two people who placed the covering paraprofessional at the scene are DOE staff members with a vested interest in the answer as to whether the Student’s [learning plan] was being implemented,” White wrote.

White was also troubled that the school had removed references to physical outbursts in Malachi’s behavior plan. Altering the behavior plan “undermines the DOE’s assertion that it arrived at the correct conclusion,” she wrote.

The principal of I.S. 181 did not respond to a request for comment. An Education Department spokesperson declined to comment on specific student cases and did not answer a question about whether the school’s staff have received training on the suspension process.

White ruled in Malachi’s favor, ordering the Education Department to pay for about 126 hours of one-on-one tutoring to make up for the disruption to his education. Malachi still served the monthlong suspension, which would have been nearly three weeks shorter if the school had found the fight was related to his disability at the initial review meeting.

Shuchman said overturning a suspension on appeal after the student has already served it is common, as that process often takes around 40 days to play out and most suspensions are capped at 20 days.

“It’s really justice delayed,” she said.

City officials resist calls for reform

Over the past year, advocates have pushed the Education Department to reform the discipline process but have struggled to gain traction.

A group of attorneys lobbied the Education Department to directly connect families to advocates before the suspension review meetings, as parents often don’t know their rights or how the process works. A handful of public interest legal groups offered to supply pro-bono advocates.

“Just having somebody in the room, just having your back … is really important to families,” said Gerst, one of the lawyers who supported the effort. “When we do advocate, we often find so many other special education issues.”

Some advocates and parents also suggested that school staff don’t review their own school’s suspension decision. The idea has some precedent: At charter schools, the suspension reviews are typically overseen by Education Department staff who don’t work for the school.

So far, the city has rejected the proposal to provide legal representation for families during the process, a decision Education Department officials declined to explain.

But they expressed some openness to taking the process out of the hands of the school that disciplined the student.

“It’s something that we are talking about,” said Jemilo, the Education Department official, “and exploring what an alternative could be.”

If the city made that change “that could be big,” Shuchman said, because the current process creates “a real conflict of interest.”

It is unclear how seriously city officials are considering it, however. An Education Department spokesperson declined to answer questions about who would conduct the reviews or a timeline for making that change.

Trisha Clayton and her son, Tristan, pose for a portrait at their home in 2024 in Brooklyn, New York.

In the meantime, advocates said the process is still stacked against families.

For Clayton, Tristan’s mother, the process was so overwhelming that she pulled him out of the city’s school system.

Even though Tristan won hundreds of hours of one-on-one tutoring, Clayton struggled to coax him to attend. The teen’s experience at school had reached a breaking point, and Tristan wound up getting suspended again, she said.

That was the final straw. “I was like, ‘I’m going to spend half the time at a suspension hearing,’” Clayton said.

So last September, Tristan moved in with his aunt upstate. His mother said he’s doing better in school, landed a job at a local bakery, and plans to go to trade school for plumbing.

The guidance counselor from Tristan’s old school recently called to ask after the teen.

Clayton was thrilled to offer an update.

“He’s really thriving,” she said. “I’m in disbelief.”

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

NYC faces a massive (and expensive) class size mandate. Here’s where the mayoral candidates stand.

2025-05-16T20:11:27+00:00

This is part of a series in which Chalkbeat asked the mayoral candidates questions about important education issues that will likely define the next four years. The primary is June 24, with early voting from June 14-22.

The next mayor of New York City will be responsible for implementing one of the biggest changes to schools in recent years: sharply reducing class sizes.

Under a state law passed in 2022, the city’s K-12 classrooms must be capped at 20-25 students depending on grade level, with performing arts and physical education classes allowed up to 40. Fewer than half of the city’s classrooms currently fall within those caps. The city must reach full compliance by September 2028.

It’s a massive task that will require a hiring spree projected to cost as much as $1.9 billion annually and potentially many billions more to create new classroom space. Where that money will come from remains an open question the next mayor must answer.

Most of the candidates said they would push state lawmakers to finance it — though it’s unclear if state officials will pony up.

The next administration will also have to confront other tricky tradeoffs. Should some schools receive exemptions from the law? Should popular schools cap enrollment? Which schools will get to build new space? How can it be implemented without shortchanging high-need schools, which already tend to have smaller classes?

Chalkbeat sent a questionnaire to the leading candidates on March 25 to find out their views on seven pressing issues. A spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams said he declined to participate since he isn’t in the primary.

We asked each of the candidates how they would approach the class size reduction mandate. Here’s what they told us.

Responses may have been edited for formatting or trimmed for length, but otherwise each candidate’s answers are as submitted, including hyperlinks.

Parent leaders demand overhaul amid dysfunctional school council elections

2025-05-13T21:59:43+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Parent leaders across the city are raising alarms about New York City’s local school council elections, citing “gross mismanagement” of the process by the Education Department.

At issue are Community Education Council races, which are held every two years to elect parent leaders in each of the city’s 32 local districts and four citywide councils representing English learners, students with disabilities, and high school families. Families vote online through their New York City Schools accounts, or NYCSA, through May 13.

The Education Department’s office of Family and Community Engagement, known as FACE, runs the elections which saw just 2% of voter turnout during each of the past two cycles. This will be the third election in which all parents with public school children can vote; previously, PTA leaders selected candidates.

The problems in this election cycle range from inconsistently listing candidates on ballots, with some appearing with their last names first and others in the reverse order, to larger problems that have interrupted voting or erased some votes entirely.

This year’s election cycle got off to a bumpy start. Hours after voting began April 25, Education Department officials took the system offline to fix “technical issues.” The system was down for about 11 hours.

In Manhattan’s District 1, which covers the Lower East Side and East Village, one parent vying for a council seat was left off the ballot. Voting had already been underway for a week, but FACE staffers told families who had already voted, that they would have to vote again.

Meanwhile, the Citywide Council for High Schools contends that FACE has not properly overseen candidate forums, “allowing various violations of the rules by candidates without interruption from the FACE representative on duty who was either passive or left prematurely.”

Three councils — District 1, District 20 in Brooklyn, and the high school council — have drafted resolutions calling for FACE to be overhauled or dismantled and urging local and state elected officials to intervene.

“The persistent and systemic failures in FACE’s administration of these elections undermines parent trust in the process and threatens to depress parent participation in school governance,” according to language from all three resolutions, which are advisory and are expected to be voted on this week.

An Education Department spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about the resolutions. Officials said only that they are extending the deadline for voting — from 5 p.m. to 11:59 p.m. on May 13. They said state law prevents them from extending it further.

Community Education Councils’ main formal role is to approve boundaries that define geographic areas from which schools may draw students. They have little policymaking power, though they offer an important feedback mechanism from parents to Education Department officials. Some have taken up hot-button issues in recent years, from transgender students’ participation in sports to protecting students from immigration enforcement at school.

As some councils have waded into the culture wars, this year’s elections have garnered more interest from parents who previously had paid little attention to these democratic bodies.

Critics have raised concerns for years about the election process, often noting that participation is frequently dismal. In 2023, the city spent about $224 per voter, or nearly $4.3 million, to operate that election, department officials told parent leaders.

A Chalkbeat investigation after the last election highlighted numerous concerns as to how FACE conducted the process, including how the office was gripped internally by turmoil and factions, potentially affecting the turnout and its outcomes. City Comptroller Brad Lander proposed a series of reforms last November to improve outreach and set clearer campaign rules.

Fivel Rothberg, who worked as an outreach consultant supporting the education council elections until last month, said he is disappointed that the process remains so dysfunctional.

“FACE had two years, from 2023 to 2025, to organize a better election rollout,” Rothberg said. The Education Department’s “mismanagement of the [education council] elections is disheartening because there is so much possibility … for parental involvement in improving schools.”

Some District 1 families said they worry there is no easy fix for leaving a candidate off the ballot. Even as the Education Department extends the voting window, it’s unclear if every family who had already voted will cast another ballot.

City officials told parent leaders this week that 83 parents had voted prior to canceling and restarting the ballots, but they didn’t provide information on how many of those parents revoted, said Noah Harlan, the president of District 1’s council. He said he had “serious concerns about disenfranchisement” of the parents who votes were cancelled and did not have the same voting window as those in other districts after the vote restarted.

“It’s unpredictable where this will go because it’s so messy,” said Robert Murtfeld, a District 1 parent and former education council member. “Even if we extended the voting for a week, where’s the fairness?”

The dysfunctional elections process suggests the Education Department sees the councils as an afterthought, said Erika Kendall, president of the education council in Brooklyn’s District 17. But for her, the councils are an important conduit for parent voice and driving additional resources to the district. The council recently advocated for the city to open a local school geared toward students with reading challenges, she noted.

“The idea that we don’t have to be taken seriously, that we’re just kind of this burden that everybody tolerates, I find it very disrespectful especially considering the meaningful work that we can do,” Kendall said.

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.

Backlash over culture wars brings new energy to NYC’s parent council elections

2025-05-09T21:56:31+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

During the last Community Education Council elections in 2023, Manhattan parent Joseph Wallace was barely aware of the existence of his local parent council — much less who served on it or what happened during meetings.

That changed over the next two years as the council in Manhattan’s District 2, which runs from the lower tip of the borough to the Upper East Side, dove headlong into the culture wars consuming school boards across the country.

In early 2024, two council members spoke at a Manhattan town hall for the right-wing national parent group Moms for Liberty. Several months later, the council passed a resolution calling on the city Education Department to reconsider its policy allowing transgender girls to join girls sports teams, sparking months of sustained protest and media attention.

Both efforts — surprising for a parent group in deep blue Manhattan — were spurred by council members linked to the influential and polarizing local education advocacy group Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, or PLACE, whose co-founder Maud Maron is a current member of the council and is running for re-election.

“What has upset me most is I thought it was kind of this innocuous council, and it turns out people are waging culture wars,” said Wallace, a parent at P.S. 51 in Hell’s Kitchen.

PLACE – which launched in 2019 to defend selective admissions policies and whose leaders have embraced efforts to rid schools of “gender ideology” and critical race theory – maintains the group is apolitical and interested primarily in rigorous education. But in New York City, as in districts across the country, national partisan political fights have increasingly made their way into local education debates, sharpening divides between parents.

District 2 CEC members Maud Maron (third from left) and Charles Love (second from right) at a Moms for Liberty event in January, 2024 on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

Now, with a new CEC election cycle underway through May 13, there are signs of a growing backlash against what some parents see as an alarming rightward shift in the city’s education councils, spurred by PLACE’s success in propelling its preferred candidates into seats in 2021 and 2023.

In District 2, Wallace is part of an energetic movement to unseat PLACE candidates, with two organizing groups springing up this election cycle. Other efforts to counter PLACE-backed candidates have emerged in Brooklyn and Queens, and the progressive advocacy group Alliance for Quality Education endorsed candidates for the first time. Even PLACE seems to be feeling the shifting winds — making the surprise move not to endorse Maron, the parent leader who put the group on the map.

Maron’s response to being left off the group’s list: “Trans activists scare a lot of people into taking cowardly positions. Appeasement never works and I don’t scare so easily,” she wrote in an email.

Across the city, 1,346 candidates have tossed their hats in the ring for council seats, up from 1,107 in 2023, according to the Education Department. And parent leaders in multiple districts told Chalkbeat they’re seeing more energy and interest than ever before in this year’s CEC elections — propelled both by local concerns and urgent fears over the Trump administration’s efforts to target transgender and immigrant students, and efforts to cut federal funding for high-poverty schools.

“In this political climate, it’s very easy to feel powerless over a lot of things, and I just felt like this was something I don’t have to feel powerless over,” said Leila Colbert, a District 2 candidate.

Obstacles to voter turnout remain

It remains to be seen how effective or widespread the effort to challenge PLACE-backed candidates will be. CEC elections have notoriously low-turnout. In 2023, only 2% of eligible parents voted. Wealthier areas, like District 2, where parents have the savvy and wherewithal to navigate the voting process tend to see higher voter participation.

There are Community Education Councils for each of New York City’s 32 local districts, as well as four citywide councils, representing high schools, students learning English as a second language, and students with disabilities.

The councils are largely advisory but have the power to approve zoning decisions and can serve as a public platform and point of access to decisionmakers.

Councils in some districts, particularly in more conservative areas like western Queens and southern Brooklyn, are almost entirely composed of PLACE-backed candidates and opposition groups are supporting few challengers.

But the local anti-PLACE movement is getting a boost from the same political energy that has powered backlashes against conservative school board candidates in other parts of the country and the recent groundswell of progressive candidates entering local races to push back against Trump.

“We’ve been seeing it over the last really year-plus, and there’s reason to suspect that it will continue to snowball in the upcoming batch of CEC elections… especially in CEC 2,” said Jonathan Collins, a professor of political science and education at Columbia University Teachers College.

Amid that backlash, PLACE leaders are making a concerted effort to pull back from hot-button political issues. PLACE co-president Yiatin Chu said the decision not to endorse Maron, who is also running as a Republican for Manhattan District Attorney, was driven by wanting to reduce some of the “distractions” that created dysfunction in the District 2 council.

“With so much noise and culture wars on the national stage and in the city, it becomes distractions for what we’re trying to do,” Chu said. “Once you start veering into other issues … it’s not helpful for our advocacy.”

Maron, who was removed from the council by former schools Chancellor David Banks in 2024 for misconduct but reinstated after she sued the city, defended her “proven track record of protecting merit-based academics in NYC public schools and supporting District 2 families.”

“Improving the math curriculum does not conflict with addressing the harms of hormonal and surgical interventions, misleadingly called ‘gender-affirming care,’ or standing up for female student athletes’ rights to same sex sports,” she added, referring to medical treatment for transgender youth backed by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Other former PLACE leaders running for re-election also sought to distance themselves from Maron and the issues and groups she has embraced.

Craig Slutzkin, CEC 2 president and a former PLACE officer who is among the primary targets of the anti-PLACE organizing in District 2, wrote in an open letter that he has “never been a member of the MAGA movement” and is “not affiliated with Moms for Liberty.”

PLACE is “very, very narrowly focused on rigorous education” and “want[s] nothing to do” with the transgender sports issue, said Deborah Alexander, a candidate for the Citywide Council on High Schools, and a former long-time PLACE officer. “Personally, I would not remain in PLACE if that’s what PLACE was about,” she added, noting she has transgender and nonbinary family members.

Some critics have also questioned why many of PLACE’s former officers, including Alexander and Slutzkin, don’t mention their PLACE affiliation in official CEC candidate bios. Both Slutzkin and Alexander said they consider their PLACE advocacy separate from their CEC roles. Alexander, who is running as a Bronx representative to the Citywide Council on High Schools, added that she doesn’t think “the constituency of the Bronx has any idea who PLACE is particularly. Our reach doesn’t really go there much as much as we’ve tried.”

PLACE’s efforts to create distance from the transgender sports resolution — which was purely advisory and swiftly rejected by the Education Department — ring hollow to many critics.

“I think they’re trying to change the optics but I don’t think much has changed in the hearts and minds of PLACE,” said Gavin Healy, a current District 2 council member who voted against the transgender sports resolution.

PLACE is still endorsing six District 2 CEC members, including Slutzkin, who voted with Maron in support of the transgender sports resolution, along with the other council member who spoke at the Moms for Liberty event.

A new opposition emerges in District 2

Megan Madison, a children’s book author, said she first became aware of District 2’s CEC when one of its PLACE-endorsed members challenged the inclusion of a book she wrote about race in a central Education Department curriculum.

But she stepped up her involvement after the council passed its transgender sports resolution in March 2024, sensing an opportunity to tap into growing energy around defending transgender rights.

A group that called itself the “Aunties” began flooding council meetings, sometimes with hundreds of members, and accompanied by well-known figures like actor Elliot Page. Protesters speak during public comment, wave colorful banners, and sometimes drown out council members with chants and songs.

Over time, the protests morphed into a more organized effort to unseat Maron and other PLACE-backed candidates. Madison, who is not a public school parent, was shocked at the low levels of engagement and turnout in the last CEC election and saw room to bring in new voters.

Council members display a transgender flag at a District 2 CEC meeting in March, 2024.

The group has amassed a listserv in the thousands and got 60 volunteers to canvas and post flyers, Madison said. In recent weeks, another grassroots group called Families for Change NYC emerged to challenge PLACE-backed candidates. The group, which describes itself as a loose coalition of more than 75 parents and community members seeking candidates who represent the views of “ordinary parents,” has not disclosed the names of its members out of fear of harassment — a decision that sparked criticism from PLACE co-president Chu.

As the campaigning in the district has picked up, so has the dysfunction in the District 2 council. The body is often unable to pass resolutions, roiled by partisan splits, council members shouting over each other, and accusations that the protests have turned into harassment. Some members left meetings early, sparking accusations that they are trying to prevent votes.

The problems caught the attention of Congress members Jerrold Nadler and Dan Goldman, who, along with nine state and local elected officials, penned a letter last month urging the city Education Department to crack down on behavior that “violates the public trust, and disregards the basic principles of good governance and transparency.”

Slutzkin, the council president, said there is no mechanism to prevent members from leaving early, and that the elected officials’ letter contained multiple falsehoods.

He’s been appalled by some of the campaign tactics of PLACE opponents, including plastering dozens of flyers with a picture of his face around his child’s school, Slutzkin said. The Education Department office overseeing the elections sent a message last week saying that flyers “that disparage candidates, and which are placed near schools … represent a serious erosion of the fairness and integrity of the election process.”

Madison said the Aunties have tried to steer clear of personal attacks, but being on a council means being “public about your politics and therefore accountable to the public.”

Beyond the results of the election, Madison sees the publicity the group has generated — along with PLACE’s decision not to endorse Maron — as a sign that “we’re winning, little by little.”

District 2 campaign echoes citywide

While the energy of the PLACE opposition is concentrated in District 2, it has also reverberated in other parts of the city.

In District 30 in Jackson Heights, Queens, a group of parents called “D30 Parents Protecting Trans Children” organized to endorse a slate of candidates, motivated by what happened in District 2 and fears about the federal efforts to target transgender kids, said Hallie Iiannoli, one of the leaders.

One of the current members of the District 30 council who was endorsed by PLACE in 2023 and again this year asked PLACE to remove her from their list because she didn’t want to be associated with the District 2 resolution on transgender kids and sports.

“I know they’re strong on Gifted and Talented, which I’m strong on too. What I don’t believe in is being against trans [children],” said the council member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she didn’t want to speak publicly about endorsements.

In Brooklyn’s District 15, a long-running group called D15 Parents for Middle School Equity endorsed a slate of PLACE challengers for the second time, including in the Citywide Council for High Schools, or CCHS, which has become a stronghold for PLACE-backed candidates in recent elections.

Reyhan Mehran, the group’s founder, said she’s seen increased engagement during this election cycle, driven by the “outrageousness of what happened in CEC 2,” but is skeptical that there will be any major changes in the voting outcomes.

Julia Watson, a spokesperson for Alliance for Quality Education, said in an email the group decided to endorse this year “because of the harm we’ve seen in the past couple years when there are people in office that do not have all the kids’ best interest in mind.”

Debbie Kross, a former PLACE officer and current president of the CCHS, said the idea of running to unseat PLACE candidates because of concerns about what happened in District 2 or in an effort to push back against the Trump administration is both wrongheaded and naive.

“They’re just running out of spite,” she said.

“If the hope of these people is they’re gonna run and they’re gonna fight Trump, I mean, good luck,” she added. “Because we don’t have any of that power.”

But Madison, the organizer in District 2, said that while it’s true the CECs have limited power, diminishing their importance “has functioned to decrease engagement.”

PLACE itself has built influence and political power through its success in CEC elections, she added. “I think it does matter.”

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

Literacy support, HBCU classes, health care careers: 7 new schools coming to NYC

2025-05-05T23:33:19+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

A new literacy-focused academy in central Brooklyn to help struggling readers. A health care-focused high school partnering with a hospital system in Queens. The city’s first-ever high school to offer early college classes through a historically Black institution.

Those are among the seven new public schools slated to open next year in New York City, part of a multiyear flurry of openings that city officials hope will reinvigorate the system at a time of faltering enrollment.

“Our new school strategy is designed to directly address that challenge,” Education Department First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg told reporters Monday at the Education Department’s downtown headquarters kickoff event. “This is really trying to be responsive to community need.”

The principals set up display tables stocked with flyers and trinkets related to their school’s specialties, which reflect some of the city’s biggest education priorities and challenges.

The Central Brooklyn Literacy Academy in Crown Heights is part of a larger push to revamp the way city public schools teach literacy and identify and support students with dyslexia. Several others are designed to equip students with specific skills and credentials to enter the workforce,part of a larger effort to rethink how schools should prepare students for life after graduation. Another geared towards newly arrived immigrants comes on the heels of a historic influx of migrant students whom the city’s education system is still straining to accommodate.

Officials have launched 16 new schools over the past two years — a pace that comes with some risk as the city is still reeling from the loss of roughly 100,000 K-12 students since the 2019-2020 school year. Many schools are struggling to sustain enough enrollment to even stay viable.

But officials say the new schools can boost enrollment citywide by attracting families who may have otherwise left the system.

“We are bringing students back into the New York City public school system,” said Asya Johnson, the principal of HBCU Early College Prep, set to open in Southeast Queens in the fall. “There are students who applied from Catholic schools, private schools, and parochial schools … We are a direct indication of what’s possible.”

Here are the schools set to open next year and how they fit into the city’s educational landscape:

Bronx STEAM Center:

Based on the Brooklyn program with the same name, the Bronx STEAM Center offers 11th and 12th graders at 10 partner schools specialized training in careers like health care and cybersecurity. Students will split their time between their home school and the Bronx STEAM center, which is equipped with specialized facilities and staff.

Students apply to the program in 10th grade and must be enrolled in “accelerated coursework” at their current school. Buses will shuttle students between their home school and the Bronx STEAM Center, and students will receive diplomas from both schools, said principal Maha Hasen.

Central Brooklyn Literacy Academy:

The bumpy road to opening the Central Brooklyn Literacy Academy showcases both the promise and pitfalls of the city’s new school efforts. To secure space for the literacy academy, city officials proposed closing M.S. 394, a shrinking traditional public school in Crown Heights, sparking intense pushback from that school’s families and educators that delayed the approval process by several months.

But supporters of the Literacy Academy, which offers specialized instruction for students lagging several grades behind in reading, say it’s sorely needed. The academy, modeled on a similar program that launched two years ago in the South Bronx, is an effort to offer the kind of tailored literacy instruction that has often historically been confined to private schools disproportionately accessible to wealthier families.

As part of the compromise that led to the school’s approval, Education Department officials agreed to give priority at the Literacy Academy to students from M.S. 394 as well as those from several surrounding districts. Students do not need to have a learning disability to enroll — and 60% don’t — said parent leader Naomi Peña.

Principal Jason Borges acknowledged that the rocky approval process has been a challenge, but said the school is working hard to recruit and staff up by this fall.

“It’s all cylinders at once,” he said.

HBCU Early College Prep High School:

The first-of-its-kind school in southeast Queens is among a growing number of early college programs that allows students to earn college credits and leave high school with an associate degree. The school will partner with Delaware State, a historically Black college, and expose students to the “rich traditions of an HBCU” by matching them with faculty mentors and setting up frequent visits, according to the school’s flyer.

The school, which admitted roughly 100 students to its inaugural class, screens applicants based on their middle school grades, two essay questions, and a video. The school is part of an effort by former schools Chancellor David Banks to open more “academically accelerated” schools in historically underserved neighborhoods. The school got roughly 1,000 applications for its inaugural class, Johnson said.

“The Southeast Queens community demanded to have a school like this, and they deserve it,” she said.

Middle School of Innovation:

The Middle School of Innovation will focus on technology and weave artificial intelligence into its curriculum, said principal Eileen Herusso, whose display table featured a virtual reality headset, turntable, and video game consoles.

Herusso said the middle school, located in Brooklyn’s chronically overcrowded District 21, will bring some of the specialized technology usually found in high schools to a younger crowd.

Banks, despite initial skepticism, became a vocal supporter of exploring the application of artificial intelligence in schools, teasing a sweeping plan that has yet to come to fruition.

Northwell School of Health Sciences:

City officials have been promoting the opening of the Northwell School of Health Sciences for more than a year.

Located in a gleaming new facility in Woodside, Queens, the school is supported by a $25 million startup grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies to launch what officials say is a pathbreaking partnership between a city public high school and a major health care system.

Students can graduate with credentials that allow them to start work right after high school in roles like medical assistant, but many will also go on to college and higher degrees, said principal Erika Hurtado-Valentino.

Students will also get access to paid internships, and eligible graduates will get guaranteed job interviews at Northwell, school officials said. Banks touted the school as a crown jewel in his efforts to expand career and technical education citywide, efforts his successor, Melissa Aviles-Ramos, has continued.

Admission to the school is unscreened, though students living in Queens get priority. The inaugural class is expected to be between 200 and 225 students.

Queens International High School:

A part of the Internationals Network of public schools geared toward newly arrived immigrants, Queens International High School will be the first such school run from sixth to 12th grade. It’s also the first international middle school in Queens, the borough that’s absorbed the largest share of the roughly 48,000 newcomers who have arrived since summer 2022, according to city officials.

Starting in sixth grade will allow the school to begin work on language acquisition earlier than other international schools and put students in a good position to either continue on at the school in ninth grade or apply to other high schools, said principal Elizabeth Demchak, who previously founded and led Claremont International High School in the Bronx. Students who entered the country in the last five years are eligible to enroll.

The school’s approval wasn’t without friction. Parents from the I.S. 77, located in the same building, protested that opening the new school will strain building resources and draw students away from I.S. 77, which offers a Spanish dual language program.

Staten Island Rise Academy P.S. 89:

A K-8 school for students with autism and other complex disabilities, Staten Island Rise Academy is the first such public school to open in the borough in decades, said principal Denise D’Anna.

The school is a part of the city’s District 75 for schools that serve students with complex disabilities. Officials have pushed to open more District 75 schools in recent years to cut down on the often hours-long school bus commutes students in the district face to get to schools that can meet their needs.

D’Anna, who started her career as a school bus driver, said the new school will “alleviate a lot of the time that our students are sitting on buses and having to travel, making it easier for families to be … a part of the school.”

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

Brooklyn school closure wins approval, making way for new ‘literacy academy’ for struggling readers

2025-05-01T21:28:33+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

After months of intense debate, a citywide education panel voted Wednesday night to close a Brooklyn school with dwindling enrollment and open a new one for struggling readers in its place.

The city’s Panel for Educational Policy nearly unanimously approved the Education Department’s plan to phase out M.S. 394, a prekindergarten-8 school in Crown Heights, over the next three school years.

And the panel greenlit opening a new school, the Central Brooklyn Literacy Academy, in the same building. It will be the second city-operated public school designed to serve students with dyslexia and other reading challenges.

City officials contend that M.S. 394 is too small — and low performing — to stay open. Two hundred students currently attend, 41% fewer than five years ago. The school’s reading and math proficiency rates in grades 3-8, at 23% and 27% respectively, are less than half the city averages last year.

The Education Department is under pressure to address a growing number of tiny schools, which are expensive to operate and struggle to offer a full range of programs because funding is tied to student headcount. In recent years, officials have ramped up school mergers, which are often less contentious than closures. M.S. 394 represents only the third school closure to be approved under Mayor Eric Adams.

The M.S. 394 proposal drew intense pushback, including a rare rebuke from the school’s principal, prompting some panel members to call for a broader conversation about how to improve the closure process to incorporate community input earlier.

“To be excluded from discussions about the very future of my school feels like a missed opportunity to explore creative, viable solutions together,” M.S. 394 Principal Sojourner Welch-David said in December before a closure vote that was ultimately postponed. “I just want to say this to the chancellor: Please allow principals [to] have a seat at the table so they’re not standing here like me trying to fight for my school.”

Fierce community pushback sparks broader debate about closure process

In recent months, students, parents, and educators from M.S. 394 have packed public meetings in a bid to save it. The school is a community hub with a core of dedicated educators who know their students well, are dedicated to improving student performance, and even attend their birthday parties, families said. Many were frustrated that the city seemed more focused on opening a new school rather than investing in improving M.S. 394.

“This proposal to phase out our school over three years feels like a profound injustice — a direct assault on our children and their education,” Aliza Ellison, the school’s parent association president, said before the closure vote at Wednesday’s panel meeting. “The tight-knit community we have built [will be] dismantled.”

The closure vote was initially scheduled for December but was postponed after panel members were caught off guard by the depth of community opposition, Chairperson Greg Faulkner previously said. Education Department officials scheduled a new vote in February but abruptly removed it from the agenda that month.

In the months that followed, top Education Department officials, including Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos and First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg, visited the school. “We were impressed by an environment that was full of safety and love for the kids,” Weisberg said Wednesday. The city ultimately agreed to modify the proposal.

Instead of closing the school at the end of this year, they proposed phasing it out gradually with the 2027-2028 school year as its final year of operation, keeping its pre-K program open during that time. Officials also vowed to give current students priority admission to the new literacy academy. (Several surrounding Brooklyn districts, including 13, 16, 23, and 32 will also get an admissions priority.)

The new literacy academy will open in the building next year and serve students in grades 2-3 before it eventually expands to become a grades 2-8 school with specialized instruction for students who struggle with reading. Education Department officials said half of M.S. 394’s current first and second graders would be eligible based on mid-year reading assessments.

The Education Department framed the tweaked proposal as a direct response to community feedback, though the changes did not seem to win over many families and educators who testified for hours on Wednesday evening in opposition to the plan.

Many caregivers emphasized that as the school gradually jettisons entire grade levels, beginning with grades K-3 next year, some siblings will no longer be able to attend school together, complicating their commutes.

“Our feeling is the same as before,” Leon Gidron, a parent of three children at M.S. 394, said of the plan in an interview before the vote. “It doesn’t take closing our school to promote a [new] program.”

Still, all of the panel members voted to approve the phase-out plan with only Faulkner abstaining. Tom Sheppard, an elected parent member of the panel, said he was sympathetic to the community’s arguments to keep the school open but argued it had simply become too small.

“We’ve seen the same thing play out in the Bronx, where I’m from, where schools get to a point where they just are not sustainable,” he said. The phase-out plan “allows for 394 to wind down with a degree of dignity that hasn’t been afforded to a lot of schools.”

Faulkner said he hopes to use the M.S. 394 debate to inform a broader discussion about how to overhaul the closure and merger process in the future and has created a committee to explore the issue.

“There were some missteps,” Faulkner said Wednesday. “We can credit the parents at 394 for having us take a look at the way that we do this process.”

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

‘Zero operational X-ray machines’: NYC schools halt pop-up screening as metal detectors break down

2025-04-25T20:12:42+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

New York City’s pop-up school metal detector program, which scans students at random or at schools with security threats, has ground to a halt.

The problem? They have no working scanners.

The Police Department’s School Safety Division typically shows up at three or four different schools each day for random scanning. That unit “has zero operational x-ray machines due to the breakdown of antiquated metal detection equipment,” officials wrote in an emergency request for more scanners. “Therefore, the unannounced scanning unit is unable to provide any scanning whatsoever.”

The Education Department, which contends that metal detectors and X-ray machines are crucial tools to keep students safe, issued an emergency contract to buy 15 new ones for nearly $385,000. That process allows the city to purchase scanners before seeking approval from the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, a 24-member body that typically must vote on contracts.

The new scanners have yet to be delivered, Education Department officials confirmed. They did not say how long the random scanning unit has been in limbo.

“God forbid that there’s an incident and it could have been prevented if we had scanners,” said Greg Faulkner, the chair of the panel. “It’s a big deal to me.”

On top of the mobile scanning unit, 86 New York City public school campuses have permanent metal detectors and X-ray machines students must pass through. The dearth of functioning machinery is affecting those schools too, officials said, as they have no backups if a scanner stops working. Breakdowns on those campuses have led to long lines for students to get to class, principals warned earlier this school year.

The move comes amid broader concerns about school safety that have emerged this year. Roughly 120 school administrators and staffers signed an open letter calling on the city to replace broken scanners and hire more school safety agents, whose ranks have plummeted 28% over the past five years. Those staff are also responsible for operating the scanning equipment.

So far this academic year, school safety staff have confiscated 4,201 weapons and other “dangerous instruments” including 15 firearms, according to Police Department data. That is fewer than the nearly 4,800 items seized during the same period last year, though 11 guns were confiscated.

The data also include items such as tasers and pepper spray that some students carry to protect themselves during their commutes.

It’s unclear whether the decrease in the number of dangerous items found in schools is related to shortages of scanning equipment and staff, students bringing in fewer prohibited items, or other factors.

Deploying metal detectors in city schools has long sparked fierce debate. Some students and advocates say the devices make schools feel less welcoming, though some families say they offer reassurance that their kids are safe on campus.

“There is a lot of sentiment that it contributes to poor attendance and lateness rates,” said Dahlia Diez Chan, a junior at The High School for Language and Diplomacy and non-voting member of the Panel for Educational Policy.

“Decreasing the extent of scanning in schools isn’t about making schools less safe — it’s about decriminalizing schools and treating students the way we deserve,” she added during a panel meeting on Wednesday.

Other panel members were wary of the Education Department’s plan to purchase new scanners as an emergency measure, as aging equipment should be a predictable expense.

“The [Education Department’s] position is these machines that need to be replaced have gotten to the end of their useful life,” Tom Sheppard, a Bronx parent who serves on the panel, said in an interview. “My concern is that this wasn’t an actual emergency.”

Education and Police Department officials did not explain why the city hadn’t foreseen the need for scanners.

“To replace the needed scanners, this was brought to vote as an emergency item, and we are prepared to work to address any questions or concerns ahead of next week’s PEP meeting to maintain this critical service,” Education Department spokesperson Lyle wrote in a statement.

The panel was initially scheduled to vote Wednesday on a retroactive contract to approve the new scanners, but the Education Department abruptly pulled it from the agenda to address questions about the contract, officials said. Smiths Detection, the company that won the contract for new scanners, did not respond to questions.

A new vote is scheduled for April 30.

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

‘Technical issues’ take NYC parent council elections offline on first day of voting

2025-04-25T19:22:27+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Just hours into the first day of voting for New York City’s elected parent councils, Education Department officials took the system offline to fix “technical issues,” a spokesperson said.

It wasn’t immediately clear what officials were fixing. But on Friday multiple parents reported glitches and mistakes in the online voting system, including parents appearing on ballots for seats for which they are not running.

As of early Friday afternoon, a message on the online voting page said “voting has been paused, as there are updates being made to the site. We are hopeful to resume this afternoon.”

The setback was frustrating for some Community Education Council candidates who said they’ve been working hard to remind parents to vote and help them troubleshoot, and worry that the technical glitches Friday will make an already complicated process that much more difficult.

“It’s just extremely disappointing because we’ve been working so hard to have our school parent community be involved in this process,” said Alejandro Epifanio Torres, an elementary school parent running for the council in District 1 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

During the last election cycle in 2023, only 19,000 parents — or 2% of eligible voters — cast their ballots in the council election. A 2023 Chalkbeat investigation found mismanagement of both outreach and voting administration during the last council elections.

Department spokesperson Onika Richards said a vendor was addressing the “technical issues” with voting. “In the interest of ensuring a fair and accurate process, we have temporarily paused voting,” Richards said. “We are working diligently to resolve any issues by this afternoon, and we expect to resume voting promptly thereafter.”

Debbie Kross, the parent of a high school student in the Bronx who is running as the Bronx borough representative for the Citywide Council on High Schools said when she logged in to vote this morning, she discovered that her name appeared on both the Bronx and Brooklyn ballots.

“I wrote to them immediately and said, ‘remove me,’” she said. Kross said she hadn’t heard back as of early Friday afternoon.

Even though she’s technically eligible to be a Brooklyn representative since she has a child in school there, Kross said she didn’t indicate that she wanted to run there and doesn’t “know anything about Brooklyn schools … I don’t think I would be a good representative.”

Gavin Healy, a council member in Manhattan’s District 2, said he heard widespread complaints from parents about the voting process.

The advocacy group Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, known as PLACE, sent a press release just before 10 a.m. Friday urging the city to pause the voting process because of “incorrect ballots.”

The Education Department emailed parents shortly after 10 a.m. to notify them the elections were paused — just minutes after sending a reminder to vote, according to screenshots obtained by Chalkbeat.

Education Department officials didn’t immediately say how many parents voted before the site was taken offline and whether they would have to recast their ballots.

Voting remains open until May 13, though it wasn’t immediately clear whether the Education Department would extend that window. Parents vote through their New York City Schools Account, or NYCSA, and can cast ballots for up to three candidates.

Votes for the city’s district-based Community Education Councils and its citywide councils are held every two years. The elected volunteers on the councils have few formal powers outside of voting to approve rezoning proposals, but play an important role in communicating with district officials and representing parents in policy debates.

In recent years, the councils have waded into charged political issues, passing advisory resolutions on sports policy for transgender students and protections for students against President Donald Trump’s executive orders.

Friday’s voting snag comes after critics have repeatedly raised concerns about the city Education Department’s management of the elections. Last November, city Comptroller Brad Lander issued a set of recommendations to improve the election process by shoring up outreach and setting clearer rules for campaigning.

Fivel Rothberg, who until recently worked as an outreach consultant supporting the CEC elections, said the entire concept of relying on NYCSA accounts for voting was “doomed to fail” regardless of glitches because some parents struggle to access them.

“Parents and guardians already have so much on their plate,” he said. “The NYCSA system created one more twisted maze for everyone to navigate in an already complex bureaucracy.”

Healy said the fact that problems continued at the start of this election cycle was unsurprising.

“I do wish at some point they would send this to the Board of Elections,” he said. The Education Department’s Family and Community Engagement department “isn’t really able to do this kind of project, so send it to someone else,” he added.

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.

NYC needs thousands more teachers. Can it grow them from the ground up?

2025-04-23T21:52:10+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

As a new principal at Brooklyn International High School struggling to get her footing, Kathleen Rucker frequently turned to the school’s recent graduates for guidance and support.

In the decade that followed, those informal conversations evolved into a full-fledged effort to train, develop, and hire the school’s alumni as teachers, paraprofessionals, administrative assistants, and in other roles.

Currently, there are 16 alumni working at the school, and the number has gone as high as 25, Rucker said. The push has changed how Rucker approaches hiring and has paid dividends for the school’s alumni, its staff, and its current students, Rucker said.

“It actually is transformative,” said Rucker. “The school becomes a stronger, more effective curriculum and program, and the alumni are also empowered.”

Now, Education Department officials are hoping that programs like the one at Brooklyn International can serve as a model for the city to creatively address a historic teacher hiring challenge. By cultivating future educators at city high schools and providing non-teaching staff like paraprofessionals more support in making the leap to classroom teaching — approaches often described as a “grow your own” teacher model — city officials hope to build a broader, more sustainable local teacher pipeline.

The push comes as the city expects to hire between 8,000 and 9,000 teachers by next fall — almost double its normal new hire rate — in order to comply with the state’s class size reduction law. The Education Department will have to maintain the heightened hiring levels for years to come as the law takes full effect.

Rucker’s home-grown teaching program got a big boost several years ago when the Education Department rolled out Future Ready NYC — a signature initiative of former schools Chancellor David Banks that provides schools funding and support to help prepare students for career pathways, including education.

With the support of Future Ready and CUNY’s College Now program, Brooklyn International now offers a four-year course sequence to dozens of high school students that gives them the chance to learn about child development, find paid education internships, and graduate with credits they can use toward a CUNY college degree.

There are now 24 schools across the city offering the Future Ready education pathway, reaching an estimated 1,800 students, officials said.

“The Future Ready education pathway is definitely a major piece of the puzzle of how we open up our talent pipeline,” said First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg, whose office oversees the program.

But it’s not just current students that officials are hoping to turn into the next generation of city teachers. Weisberg said the Education Department is also exploring ways to help the more than 23,000 paraprofessionals working in city schools obtain a teaching certificate at “no cost” and in a “relatively short period of time” — though he acknowledged any such changes will ultimately need support from the state and would require partnership with a college or university.

“There should be 5% to 10% of that pool [of paraprofessionals] that are becoming teachers every year,” he said. “That would be a sea change for us.”

‘Alumni in every classroom’

At Brooklyn International, school leaders recognized the value of cultivating future educators long before the Education Department launched its citywide initiative.

Students rarely enter the school with an explicit interest in education, but often form close relationships with staff and over time grow interested in doing the kind of work from which they benefited so much as students, alumni and staffers said.

“I went from, ‘I don’t want to go to school,’ to, ‘I want to become a teacher in a school,’” said Anunna Meem, a 2019 alum who now works at Brooklyn International as a history teacher.

Alumni staffers bring a unique ability to relate to students’ experiences and pick up on subtle signs from kids that other educators might miss, teachers and administrators said.

Erin Fleischauer, an 18-year veteran teacher at Brooklyn International who did not attend the school, said working alongside one of her former students as a co-teacher was eye-opening.

“I’m paying attention to how kids connect differently with him than they connect with me, and I’m noticing little moves that he makes that open up opportunities that I didn’t do,” Fleischauer said.

Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos, who visited Brooklyn International on Tuesday to learn about the teacher preparation program, pointed out that recruiting future educators from international schools could also make a dent in the city’s longstanding shortage of bilingual teachers.

One Brooklyn International alum, now an education researcher, is doing research for her dissertation on the benefits of hiring alumni as teachers, and has found that it can increase students’ sense of belonging and connection in school, Rucker said.

For Rucker, the ultimate vision is having “an alumni in every classroom.”

Obstacles to teaching careers persist

Even with support from programs like Future Ready, there are still formidable obstacles standing in the paths of many prospective educators.

Meem, the Brooklyn International alum-turned-teacher, noted that many of her classmates pursuing a teaching degree at CUNY’s Brooklyn College struggled with the requirement to complete unpaid student teaching hours — facing pressure to earn money while they worked toward a degree.

And while the city’s in-house teacher preparation work offers promise, it’s a long-term investment at a time when the city’s hiring needs are immediate. That’s why Weisberg believes strengthening the paraprofessional-to-teacher pipeline can provide an immediate shot in the arm.

Paraprofessionals as a group are more reflective of the city’s student demographics than teachers, are more likely to live in the communities where they work, and often have deep experience supporting students with disabilities — another perpetual shortage area for city teachers.

Teachers earn roughly twice the starting salary of paraprofessionals, but the cost and burden of pursuing a certification keeps many paraprofessionals from making the leap, Weisberg contended. He argued that paraprofessionals should have a way to convert their work experience into credit toward a teacher certification, noting that “nothing predicts your future effectiveness as a teacher better than your current effectiveness as a teacher.”

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

‘This isn’t meant to take away autonomy’: NYC schools chief defends sweeping curriculum mandates

2025-04-22T23:07:46+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

After New York City education officials announced on Monday that all middle schools will be required to use standardized reading and math curriculums, the city’s teachers union quickly pushed back.

Their criticism is noteworthy because the union has been a crucial supporter of the city’s reading curriculum overhaul, known as NYC Reads, the signature education policy under Mayor Eric Adams. But the United Federation of Teachers has been a leading critic of the city’s efforts to rethink math instruction.

On Monday, union officials insisted it does not make sense to overhaul middle school math after the city’s “dreadful” rollout of a new high school Algebra I curriculum that has earned mixed reactions from teachers.

The lack of union support may have significant implications for the future of NYC Solves, the math curriculum mandate. Implementing the new middle school curriculum requirements, which won’t be fully phased in until fall 2027, may fall to a new mayor as Adams faces a tough bid for reelection. Some candidates vying for the job have already voiced reservations about changes to math instruction.

On Tuesday, Chalkbeat caught up with schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos for a brief interview to hear her response to the union’s criticism of the math curriculum rollout, why she believes math instruction should be overhauled, and what her message is to teachers who are concerned about changes to reading and math instruction.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The city is dramatically expanding curriculum mandates, with all middle schools using city approved reading and math curriculums by fall 2027. It seems very possible that the task of following through on those plans could fall to a new administration. Are you concerned at all about the durability of those efforts? What are you doing to ensure that those curriculums aren’t scrapped by the next administration?

Yeah, that’s a really important question. And it’s actually very important to me, because putting the election aside, none of us are going to be here indefinitely, right? And so how do we plant seeds of sustainability, so that these things are not attached to a leader but really attached to the kids and what’s best for them?

And so some of the things that we’re doing is really working in close partnership with the unions and making sure that they support this work for their members, making sure that we’re also working closely with parents and parent leaders. So that’s why the literacy ambassadors were so important and revisiting that work, right? If parents and unions and their members are all deeply invested in this work, then we know that this is going to remain when we’re all gone.

The teachers union and a couple mayoral candidates have expressed some skepticism of the math mandates. The UFT yesterday said that the rollout among high schools had been ‘dreadful.’ What is your response to those critiques?

The first thing I did when I was announced as chancellor, it might have even been the day after, was visit a campus in the Bronx with [teachers union president] Michael Mulgrew, and met with chapter leaders. I heard all their concerns and complaints about NYC Solves, and I sat with them, and I said, ‘Yeah, you’re right.’ We needed a better runway and we need to take a look at this. And they were all really, really shocked.

But what we did after that was convene a group of some of our highest performing math teachers across the city, and we selected them in partnership with the UFT. Michael and I met with them directly and said, ‘Look we need to chop this up, and we need to put in some supplemental materials.’ We need to take out some units that perhaps are not really getting to the heart of Regents exam preparation because that is a reality still in New York City.

And one of the teachers talked about autonomy, and I said, ‘This isn’t meant to take away autonomy. This is meant for teachers who maybe don’t have your level of expertise yet and they need a blueprint. You’re helping them as they navigate the line between fidelity to a curriculum and flexibility and autonomy of your lesson plans to understand how you make modifications for different learners, how you supplement materials.’ I don’t want teachers to have to make those decisions.

Are you concerned at all that the teachers union is, at least so far, not supportive of the expansion of a math mandate to middle schools?

I’m not. We’re in a very different place with [NYC] Solves than we are with [NYC] Reads and I think the UFT [the teachers union] and the CSA [the principals union] are very reasonable.

The DOE offered a pretty clear rationale for the reading curriculum overhaul, pointing to the flaws with balanced literacy and the much broader science of reading movement. The argument feels less clear for math. What is your diagnosis of what’s wrong with the city’s current approach to math instruction, and why might curriculum mandates be a solution?

I think part of the issue is that we fail to acknowledge that teachers are not curriculum designers by training. Many of them go on to be — many of them, through years of experience, design amazing curriculum. But in the end, the union charges us with giving the teachers curriculum so they can be free to do what they’re supposed to, which is teach, assess, and support children.

And so I think there are a couple of things at play here with math. One is that there’s a lot of math phobia in the system. We hear adults actually say, ‘I’m not a math person.’ I used to be guilty of that as well. I think that when we started shifting to conceptual math … people started saying, ‘Well, I didn’t learn it this [way]. Why are we doing it this new way?’

Standardized curriculum is really important so that we can actually coach on an instructional level. We don’t want to coach on a curricular level. We want to give them the resources, and then we want to focus on their actual pedagogy. So that’s one thing. Second thing is this type of math, we know we are fostering critical thinking. The type of curricula that we’re looking at are going to support our students to become mathematicians and critical thinkers, as opposed to just sort of regurgitating facts and spitting them out on a test. We want more authentic learning.

One thing I often hear from teachers about the curriculum mandates is that teachers feel like they know their school community best and devising their own curriculums can allow them to be creative in meeting the needs of their students. What is your message to teachers who have appreciated that autonomy in the past and feel uninspired by out of the box kind of curriculums?

I myself was a teacher who was not motivated by out of the box curricula. I was a high school English teacher and I wanted to teach what I wanted to teach. What motivated me to teach specific content was the interests of my children. And while I think I did a great job of that in some ways, I think that I spent a lot of time designing the what, and I needed to spend more time on the how and the assessment piece. And it is a fine line that we have to walk because we want to make sure that we’re not taking the passion and the joy out of teaching.

We’re merely saying we want to give you the curriculum. We want to give you some guardrails, and we want to give you some resources. So when you choose those supplemental materials, you’re choosing from things that are really worthy of your kids’ time.

We don’t want to take away your autonomy, but we actually want to give you the opportunity to focus on what you’re there to do, which is to teach and make your lessons and your assessments really engaging and authentic. And so if you graduate to being curricular design, curriculum designers, that’s wonderful, but that is not the primary role of a teacher. The autonomy really should be at the lesson level.

I think that what we also need to do as a system is be better about creating opportunities for teachers to voice their ideas to the central teaching and learning office in a strategic way, where we can collect these best practices and these ideas and share them across other communities of teachers. As a former teacher — or forever teacher I consider myself to be — that’s something that I charge myself with doing more in the coming months.

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

Eric Adams expands reading and math curriculum mandates to all NYC middle schools

2025-04-21T22:28:50+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

All New York City middle schools will be required to use city-approved curriculums for reading and math by fall 2027, Mayor Eric Adams and Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos announced Monday.

As the mandates are phased in, 102 middle schools across eight districts will be required this September to use a city-approved reading program selected by their superintendent, building on a literacy overhaul that was launched two years ago in elementary schools.

And in math, officials are continuing a planned expansion of a middle school mandate, adding 84 schools in six local districts this fall. Just over 100 middle schools are already part of the math curriculum requirement. (There are 529 middle schools across the city’s 32 local districts.)

Adams’ education agenda has been defined by curriculum mandates to improve reading and math proficiency. Monday’s announcement indicates Adams is following through on plans to deepen those efforts. Proponents of the curriculum overhaul contend that it can take years for the changes to bear fruit, likely leaving it up to Adams’ successor to see the effort through as the mayor faces an uncertain path to re-election.

Adams and his first chancellor, David Banks, argued that schools have had too much leeway to pick their own curriculums, leading to uneven academic results. Under half of students in grades 3-8 are proficient in reading while about 53% are proficient in math, according to state tests.

“We can’t continue to do the same things that we have been always doing and expecting to get better results,” Adams said during a press conference at Brooklyn’s Dock Street School for STEAM Studies.

The reading and math curriculum mandates, known respectively as NYC Reads and NYC Solves, are meant to guarantee that schools are using high-quality programs. Principals have traditionally been allowed to cobble together their own approaches. Many used programs that do not line up with research about how children learn to read. Additionally, using one curriculum in each district makes it easier to scale up teacher training and may be less disruptive for students who switch schools.

The mandates have won mixed reactions from parents and educators. Some have raised concerns about the specific curriculums city officials chose and others said the city’s training efforts have been uneven. All of the city’s elementary schools are now required to use one of three reading programs, and nearly all high schools have adopted a common Algebra 1 curriculum.

Teachers union chief Michael Mulgrew, a key supporter of the literacy mandate and vocal critic of the high school math mandate, did not appear at Monday’s press conference. Alison Gendar, a union spokesperson, criticized the decision to expand the math mandate to middle schools.

“The DOE rollout of the new math curriculum in the high schools was dreadful,” she wrote. “It makes no sense for the DOE to expand the math curriculum to middle schools when its work in high schools is unfinished.”

The principals union has been more concerned about curriculum mandates, and a spokesperson did not say whether the union supports the addition of middle schools. Both unions have secured some changes to the existing mandates.

The city has not yet seen clear-cut gains from the new curriculums. State reading scores dropped last school year, with larger declines in districts using the mandated reading programs, though officials pointed to other assessment data that they said is more encouraging.

Aviles-Ramos said some test score drops are expected as teachers learn how to use the new programs. “We are truly listening to what’s happening on the ground so we can address any issues,” she said. She also predicted gains in student proficiency.

“I’m super confident as we embark on state exam season that we are going to see improvements,” Aviles-Ramos said. City officials have instructed schools to ramp up test prep for students at the cusp of passing the reading tests.

Educators at schools covered by the expanded reading and math curriculum mandates will begin to receive training this spring in addition to 12 days of “job-embedded coaching” this fall.

All but one of the districts in the first wave of the middle school reading curriculum mandate will use a program called EL Education, including Manhattan Districts 1 and 3; Districts 7, 9, 11, and 12 in the Bronx; and District 13 in Brooklyn. District 19 in Brooklyn will use a curriculum called Wit & Wisdom.

In three of those districts — 3, 9, and 12 — the superintendents chose to mandate different reading programs in their middle and elementary schools. Education Department officials said superintendents made choices about which program to mandate based in part on how many schools were already using them. They did not immediately say how many middle schools are already using the curriculums mandated by their superintendent.

Notably, none of the superintendents in the initial wave chose the middle school version of Into Reading, the most commonly mandated curriculum at the elementary school level. That program has faced criticism from some educators and advocates who contend that it is not culturally responsive, is too reliant on text excerpts rather than full books, and is not focused enough on building students’ content knowledge. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the company behind the program, has previously disputed those claims.

A different set of districts are mandating middle school math programs for the first time. Four districts — District 8 in the Bronx, District 17 in Brooklyn, District 25 in Queens, and Staten Island’s District 31 — will all use a curriculum called Amplify Desmos Math. District 5 in Manhattan will use i-Ready Mathematics, and District 6 selected Illustrative Mathematics.

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

‘An absolute disgrace’: Bed-Stuy community protests sudden removal of superintendent

2025-04-15T22:10:39+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

The abrupt dismissal of a Brooklyn superintendent is spurring fierce backlash in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where dozens of community members showed up to a town hall meeting Monday night to express their outrage.

Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos removed District 16 Superintendent Brendan Mims on Monday, according to state Assembly member Stefani Zinerman, who spoke with Aviles-Ramos and organized Monday’s town hall. The exact reasons for the removal are unclear. But in a Monday letter to Aviles-Ramos recapping their recent discussions about Mims, Zinerman attributed the problems to a “breakdown in the relationship” between Mims and the local Community Education Council, an elected parent advisory board, according to a copy of the letter shared with Chalkbeat.

Mims’ interim replacement, former Deputy Superintendent Fabayo McIntosh, took over Tuesday, according to an email to principals obtained by Chalkbeat.

The removal of Mims is one of the first major personnel moves for Aviles-Ramos, who assumed her role in October and has largely emphasized her desire to maintain the policies of her predecessor, David Banks. The move could now embroil Aviles-Ramos in a public battle at a delicate moment in her tenure, as she rolls out her own first policy efforts and as her future remains uncertain with Mayor Eric Adams facing a steep climb to win reelection in this year’s mayoral race.

The chancellor’s decision — and its timing over spring break — came as a shock to Zinerman and the dozens of educators, parents, and community leaders who showed up to the hastily arranged Monday meeting in the basement of the Restoration Plaza community center. Speakers heaped praise onto Mims, a 22-year veteran of the city Education Department, for his community engagement and strong academic track record.

“I’ve been a principal for over 26 years, long enough to see the changes that have happened in District 16,” said Lena Gates, the veteran leader of P.S. 5, an elementary school in the district, and one of several principals who showed up at the town hall to support Mims. “When Brendan Mims came to District 16, I said, ‘We finally got it right…’ I’m really so upset to hear what’s happening.”

Attendees said the timing of the move also seemed like an effort to sneak it through without notice.

“That is an absolute disgrace, and it’s disrespectful,” said Zinerman, whose assembly district largely overlaps with District 16. “I’ve been elected since 2010, and I have not had the opportunity to chain myself to a door yet. This is the door that I’m going to chain myself to.”

Zinerman added that making the decision toward the end of the school year as students prepare to take state exams and at a moment of profound uncertainty for city schools because of federal threats to education could destabilize the district.

Education Department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein said the “superintendency is an appointed position and an at-will hire” who serves at the pleasure of the chancellor. She said the agency will follow the chancellor’s regulations governing the appointment of a new permanent superintendent, which include consulting with the CEC and educators unions.

In the email to principals announcing the change, Deputy Chancellor of School Leadership Danika Rux praised McIntosh as a “seasoned educator” and “proud product of District 16.”

“We extend thanks to Brendan for his service to District 16,” Rux added.

Mims couldn’t be reached for comment. NeQuan McLean, the long-time president of CEC 16, who recently appeared on stage with Aviles-Ramos to announce a new program for parent volunteers, declined to comment, and other members of the CEC didn’t respond to emails.

Banks hired Mims in 2022 as part of a sweeping shakeup of the city’s 45 superintendent positions. The effort was intended to vest the role of superintendent with additional responsibility, especially in carrying out Banks’ literacy curriculum overhaul, and to give communities more input in the selection of their district leaders.

That community input is especially important in District 16 — the neighborhood that helped birth the community control movement in the 1960s where Black and Puerto Rican community members established the Ocean Hill-Brownsville district that eventually sparked the 1968 teacher strike.

That history echoed through Monday night’s meeting.

“This is our community, and we make the decisions with regards to who is leading, specifically with our children,” said Marlon Rice, the events director at Restoration Plaza.

Mims took over a district confronting challenges

Despite its storied history, District 16 has faced steep challenges in recent decades, including enrollment losses stemming from population declines, particularly among Black families, in central Brooklyn and the proliferation of charter schools.

Earlier this year, Mims, a Brooklyn native, successfully shepherded a plan to shutter P.S. 25, the city’s smallest elementary school with just 53 students — an idea district officials first tried seven years ago but did not get approved.

People who attended Monday’s meeting pointed to Mims’ leadership as a bright spot amid those challenges, pushing the district forward academically while bringing the community on board.

The district’s proficiency rates on state English exams for grades 3-8 rose from 37% in 2022 to 44% last year, and from 25% to 44% in math for the same grades — larger than the city’s overall growth in both cases.

Mims also played a big role in bringing a new Black Studies curriculum to the district, where roughly 64% of students are Black, educators said.

Leaders of nonprofits and local businesses said Mims was unusually active in getting them involved, and one district father spoke glowingly about an informal group of dads Mims led.

“I never met a superintendent before, never had no one come out and say let’s meet and greet, we’re doing something special for the dads,” said Jason Smith, a parent in the district. “He was always concerned with how can we improve… this is something that’s hitting hard.”

Tensions emerge with local parent council

Zinerman said she started getting wind last year of tension between Mims and the local CEC — and said there has been a pattern over more than a decade of superintendents only lasting a few years in the district because of “political or interpersonal conflict.”

“What began as enthusiastic support — heralding Mr. Mims as ‘exactly the man we need’ — has devolved into mistrust,” Zinerman wrote in her Monday letter to Aviles-Ramos.

Zinerman said she met with Aviles-Ramos and several of her top deputies last Wednesday to discuss the situation and urged the city to appoint an independent mediator to resolve the dispute between Mims and the CEC.

Zinerman said she thought department officials were on the same page and was shocked to get a call around noon on Monday from Aviles-Ramos telling her that Mims was out and his replacement would start the next day.

Zinerman told attendees at Monday’s meeting that Mims was reassigned to the Education Department’s suspension hearing office, drawing jeers from the crowd. (An Education Department spokesperson did not confirm Mims’ new assignment). Research has shown that Black male educators are more likely to be shunted into disciplinary roles, and Black students in the five boroughs are disproportionately suspended.

“What they want to do is send this Black man to the suspension center, where all the Black boys go,” said Barry Cooper, a community leader who runs a program supporting boys of color. “This is educational negligence.”

Cooper pledged to continue organizing protests throughout this week, with town hall attendees committing to calling Mayor Adams, showing up at the local district office, and rallying at the Education Department headquarters in Manhattan.

“This is a precipice for us to take control of our community and be a beacon like Bed-Stuy has always been,” Cooper said.

Alex Zimmerman contributed.

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

What’s driving families to leave NYC public schools? A new survey offers clues.

2025-04-11T22:39:20+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

As enrollment in New York City’s public schools plunged in recent years, city officials said reversing the trend would be a major priority.

New statistics offer some clues about why many families left: A desire for better instruction and concerns about school safety, according to survey results the Education Department released Friday.

About 41% of families who left the system said more rigorous instruction was one of their top reasons for withdrawing. Another 40% cited a move away from the city. One in four families pointed to concerns about school safety.

More than 1,600 families who transferred their children to local private or charter schools, home-schooled them, or left the city between September 2022 and December 2023 responded to the survey.

Education Department officials framed the survey results as a way to better understand parents’ choices, some of which are tied to broader policy issues such as the city’s dearth of affordable housing. Public school enrollment, which was already on the decline before COVID hit, is now 11% below pre-pandemic levels, with 815,000 students in grades K-12. And officials predict the numbers will continue to fall over the next decade.

City officials have grown increasingly worried about recruiting and retaining families in the nation’s largest school system. Dwindling rosters are prompting difficult decisions about merging and closing schools that are often too small to offer a robust set of programs and extracurricular activities.

Among families who departed the city, half listed “concerns about schools” as one of their top five reasons for leaving. Nearly two-thirds said they were looking for a better environment to raise their family, half said they were looking for bigger homes, 42% cited concerns about crime, and 36% said they were looking for more affordable housing.

The city is trying to win families back, and officials pointed to some existing efforts to improve the system: overhauling reading and math curriculums and recruiting parent volunteers to help address chronic absenteeism. Officials are also launching a wave of selective high schools in higher-need neighborhoods.

“I am committed to listening to our families and following their lead as we shape our schools to best serve our children,” schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos said in a statement. “Understanding why families may choose to leave a NYC public school is an essential part of that work.”

The survey results are also notable for what families did not seem to prioritize when they chose programs outside the city’s public school system.

Only about one-third of families cited school diversity or a culturally relevant curriculum as significant factors. About 41% listed career preparation programs such as apprenticeships, which public schools have increasingly invested in under Mayor Eric Adams. By contrast, 74% of families said they prioritized schools that felt supportive and welcoming.

Still, multiple experts said the results offered little in the way of policy guidance and included significant limitations.

Only about 3% of families who left the city’s public schools responded to the survey, raising concerns that caregivers who did not answer may have been more likely to offer different responses.

Plus, it is difficult to interpret what families mean when they list concerns about broad issues such as academic rigor or school safety, said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

“It’s not something that I think is totally worthless,” Pallas said of the survey results. “On the other hand, I don’t think it’s telling us much that’s actionable.” Information the Education Department collected from focus groups that were conducted separately from the survey could be more useful in understanding families’ decision-making at a more granular level, he said.

Jen Jennings, a Princeton University sociology professor who has studied the city’s public schools, noted there is often a disconnect between how people respond to surveys and the reasons motivating their decisions. When families raise concerns about school safety, for instance, some research suggests they might be responding to a school’s racial composition, Jennings said.

Still, listening to what families say about their enrollment decisions can be worthwhile on its own.

“If a value of the system is getting feedback and what they’re trying to do is engage families and let them know that they care,” Jennings said, “this could have a really important purpose.”

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

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

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 education panel holds up $517 million in IT spending after losing bidder pleads for delay

2025-03-27T22:37:58+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

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.

NYC schools ramp up test prep for students on cusp of passing state reading exams

2025-03-18T12:00:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

New York City elementary schools have been ordered to step up preparation for next month’s state reading tests, a so-called “sprint” to boost scores that is raising eyebrows among educators and experts.

District officials have asked principals to focus extra test prep on students in grades 3-5 who are likely to score near the proficiency threshold on state reading tests. Those students should receive 30 to 50 minutes per week of additional practice, according to messages to some school leaders obtained by Chalkbeat. About 67,000 students were identified for the push based on mid-year assessments, officials said, roughly 38% of public school students in grades 3-5.

“With our collective focus and intentionality, we are poised to achieve up to a 5% increase in ELA proficiency this spring,” according to an email from a superintendent’s office to principals. “Let’s work together to make this Sprint a success and ensure that our students enter the ELA assessment period fully prepared and confident!”

Schools can make time for the extra preparation on Saturdays, before or after regular classes, during spring break, or throughout the regular school day, according to the message to principals. The extra test prep is supposed to run from March 10 until April 22, when state reading exams begin.

The effort is more sweeping than previous test preparation “sprints,” according to several principals who said they had not seen similar citywide directives in past years. And it comes as education officials are under pressure to show an aggressive literacy curriculum overhaul is making students better readers. Improving literacy rates is the top education initiative under Mayor Eric Adams, who is facing an uphill battle for re-election.

After the curriculum mandate rolled out to a chunk of campuses last school year, reading scores in grades 3-8 slipped 2.6 percentage points to 49.1%. The drops were slightly larger at schools that were using the new curriculums, though officials argued declines were expected because teachers were still adjusting to the new materials. But this school year, all elementary campuses were required to use one of the three city-approved reading curriculums.

“The DOE may be feeling a need to show that kids’ literacy instruction and curricula are doing better,” said Aaron Pallas, a Teachers College professor who has studied efforts to improve New York City schools.

But Pallas and other experts raised concerns with the city’s strategy, noting that it creates an incentive for schools to focus on students who are on the cusp of passing the state tests rather than those who are furthest behind. He also wondered why city officials weren’t more focused on improving literacy instruction throughout the year.

“It’s hard sometimes to distinguish test prep from genuine instruction, but this really looks a lot like test prep,” Pallas said. He added: “I just worry that focusing too narrowly on state assessments is potentially diverting attention away from underlying literacy acquisition.”

Principals take different approaches to test prep

On some campuses, the city’s directive closely mirrors what they already do to prepare students for the exams. Schools are expected to use one of two digital platforms — Amira or i-Ready — where students can take multiple choice tests that assess skills they’ll be expected to use on the state exams.

“I’m glad that my school is already doing it so it’s not shocking or anything different,” said Lorenzo Chambers, the principal of P.S. 279 in Brooklyn, who added that the program has felt flexible.

Students at his school who were identified for extra help will get individual support from teachers who are offering short mini-lessons on skills, such as drawing a conclusion from a text, followed by practicing on their own.

Chambers noted that his superintendent also encouraged principals to focus on math (not just reading) and in grades 3-8 (rather than only grades 3-5). An education department spokesperson did not respond to a question about how many of the city’s 32 local district superintendents have made similar requests to focus on a broader group of students.

Another principal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the kids identified for extra help through the sprint are not ones who need the most support.

“I’m not focusing on those kids [identified for the sprint] for my last ditch effort before the end of the school year because I’m focusing on my kids who are really, really, really struggling,” the school leader said.

Principals were given little time to plan for the additional test prep, as they were notified earlier this month, just a few days before they were expected to begin rolling it out last week. Chambers suggested the short runway could limit its impact.

“The pessimist in me would probably say, ‘too little too late,’” he said. “The optimist in me would say, ‘better late than never.’”

Other school leaders said complying with the directive is a heavier lift.

One Brooklyn elementary school principal, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid reprisal, said his school has not previously used i-Ready and is rolling it out now. The additional test prep will be offered before and after the regular school day during time that had previously been set aside for independent reading.

Given the city’s focus on pushing schools to implement new reading curriculums, the principal said the test prep directive feels “disconnected from what was supposed to fix the reading achievement issue in New York City, which is the implementation of these programs.”

The order also comes late in the school year, when school budgets are already closed. Although one principal said they were granted access to i-Ready at no cost for students who were identified for the city’s new test prep program, another was told they would have to pay for it out of their school’s budget, according to emails obtained by Chalkbeat.

“I was like ‘Are you kidding me?’ You’re asking me to purchase programs we don’t have money for? It kind of blew my mind,” said one principal who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

City officials indicated that they will monitor whether schools are complying with the directive, as the digital platforms will automatically generate biweekly reports, drawing groans about micromanagement from some school leaders.

At least one superintendent’s office has already sent principals an email ranking how much time students at their school are spending on the new test prep initiative compared with every other campus in the local district, according to an email viewed by Chalkbeat.

Education Department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein emphasized that district and school leaders have flexibility to pick strategies other than the two recommended digital platforms if they prefer. And she noted that schools should continue to support students at all levels.

“Literacy is at the heart of our society,” she wrote. “This Sprint, launched in mid-March, aims to boost proficiency outcomes using evidence-based intervention programs that have proven success in accelerating student learning.”

Alex Zimmerman is a 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.

Almost 10 years later, NYC remains in ‘flagrant’ violation of school menstrual products law: lawsuit

2025-03-17T23:32:57+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

In the nine years since New York City passed a groundbreaking law requiring public schools to provide free menstrual products in bathrooms, the Education Department has consistently “failed to deliver” on its legal obligation, a lawsuit filed last week in Manhattan alleges.

The 2016 legislation was the first in the country to require middle and high schools to provide free tampons and sanitary pads in bathrooms.

But in the ensuing years, city Education Department officials violated that law “at every turn,” failing to adequately communicate the new legal obligation to schools or ensure they were complying, according to the suit filed on behalf of the nonprofit Period Law and an unnamed teenage student. As a result, students across the city still routinely miss class time because they don’t have access to menstrual products — and when they are available, students often don’t know about them or don’t want to use them because they’re so low-quality, the suit said.

“The Department [of Education]’s failure to protect the needs of its menstruating students — despite a near-decade-long legal mandate — is both unlawful and willful,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed by the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell in Manhattan Supreme Court.

Last November, after City Council intervention and threats of legal action, the city Education Department published long-awaited compliance data. But the city’s report “falsely claimed that the Department had achieved 100% compliance,” the suit claims.

The suit asked the judge to order the Education Department to set aside a designated budget to comply with the law, hire an independent adviser to monitor its progress, and re-do its data reporting on school-by-school compliance.

Neither the city Education nor Law Department replied to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

At a 2023 City Council hearing, Education Department school facilities chief John Shea called reports of unstocked dispensers “unacceptable” and said schools should escalate complaints to his office. The Education Department has provided a “Know Your Period” student guide to every school, which walks students through how to respond to their periods, according to the city’s data.

NYC’s menstrual equity law breaks new ground

A 2019 national survey found the majority of girls across the country didn’t have access to free menstrual products in their high schools and missed school more frequently as a result.

Many girls don’t know when their periods will start and don’t bring supplies from home, and the cost of menstrual products can put them out of reach for others — a particularly acute problem in a system where more than 70% of students live in poverty. Estimates of the average cost of a month’s supply of menstrual products range from about $9 to $15.

The city’s 2016 law “was intended to put menstrual products on par with bathroom products needed by all students regardless of sex, such as toilet paper and soap,” according to the suit.

But from the outset, implementation was spotty, advocates and lawyers said.

The Education Department’s only communication with schools about the law in 2016 was a short blurb in the weekly Principal’s Digest that failed to mention the legal requirement, according to a public records request filed by Period Law.

Department officials largely placed responsibility for complying with the law in the hands of custodian engineers, who were supposed to receive the menstrual products and dispensers and replenish them when they ran low, according to the suit.

But officials did little to ensure schools were complying, and it often fell to students to ask for refills, according to the suit. Efforts to spread the word about the initiative through flyers were woefully insufficient, the suit added.

In the meantime, several enterprising student groups took oversight into their own hands. A Brooklyn Girl Scout troop visited schools in 2018 and found fewer than 1 in 5 had adequate supplies and disposal bins. An award-winning Bronx middle school podcast reported that students still had to visit the office and use a code word to get pads.

NYC Council steps up the pressure

Long-simmering complaints about the city’s lack of compliance came to the fore during a 2023 City Council hearing. Multiple lawmakers said they’d personally visited multiple schools and found no menstrual products in the bathrooms. Period Law revealed that in a recent survey of city high school students, 85% said they still lacked access to menstrual products at school.

Students said that contributed to an ongoing sense of stigma and shame about periods.

“My school didn’t provide menstrual products, and my classroom didn’t make it a comfortable place to discuss what any of us were experiencing,” said Gabriela Lopez Castillo, a recent college graduate and youth advocate for the group PERIOD, who testified at the 2023 hearing.

The suit also cites 18 examples from 2024 and 2025 of New York City educators creating crowdfunding campaigns to buy menstrual products for students who otherwise wouldn’t have access to them at school.

In December 2023, the council passed a package of new bills meant to shore up the law, expanding the mandate to cover elementary schools, and requiring the Education Department to publicly report on compliance by July 5, 2024. The Education Department blew past that deadline and only published the data in November after Period Law threatened legal action, according to the suit.

The city’s data said 100% of schools complied with the law for the 2023-2024 school year — a contention lawyers say is “obviously and demonstrably false” given the extensive testimony about lack of access to menstrual products in the September 2023 council hearing.

The suit suggests a number of possible remedies, including forcing the Education Department to work with Period Law to improve its data collection and creating a working group of advocates and officials to oversee compliance.

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

This teacher traded in-person instruction for NYC’s growing virtual learning program

2025-03-14T19:04:19+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

After two decades of teaching, Stephen Lazar suffered an injury that made it difficult to teach in a classroom. A career he loved was suddenly in jeopardy.

After a semester-long sabbatical two years ago to take care of his health, Lazar was determined to keep practicing his craft.

He applied to New York City’s Virtual Learning Classrooms program, which allows students to sign up for advanced classes that are taught remotely. The program, known as VLC, is designed to address a longstanding inequity: Small schools often struggle to pay for a wide range of classes because funding is tied to headcount, leaving students with limited access to advanced coursework.

As the number of small schools has more than doubled since 2016 due to declining enrollment, the virtual teaching program has surged in popularity. Its 42 courses serve about 2,500 middle and high school students from 70 schools.

Lazar traded his lively high school classroom for a drab Education Department building in Downtown Brooklyn where he teaches Advanced Placement courses alongside other VLC educators. The experience has been positive — nothing like hastily planned pandemic-era instruction, he said — and the coursework is setting his students up for life after high school.

“Online environments [will] be central parts of their college and work experiences in the future,” Lazar said.

Chalkbeat recently caught up with Lazar about his experience teaching virtually.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What’s the goal of the virtual teaching program?

VLC was created before the pandemic to help give students equity and access to advanced courses and early college credit opportunities. We offer courses to students whose schools either don’t have enough students to offer a class or don’t have a teacher trained to do it.

This means I have some classes that are a mix of students from different schools and others where I am teaching a full section at one school. My first-period class has students from schools in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan. One is part of a network of schools that serve recent immigrant students. And another is screened, which means the school’s admissions process takes students’ academic records into account.

In the country’s most segregated school district, it’s a pretty remarkable thing to bring such diverse students together.

How similar is the experience to teaching during the pandemic?

The only real commonality is that we’re on Zoom. Because I only teach during the traditional school day, all of my students are in a classroom in their school with a teacher there to support them. This means there is a different type of accountability for students with this model than what many students experienced during the pandemic.

While students being together presents some more classroom management challenges than when students were at home, it also makes it much easier to do collaborative work and projects.

What are your favorite advanced classes to teach?

AP Seminar and AP Research are particularly valuable offerings. These courses are both content-agnostic and help students develop research, writing, and presentation skills on topics that they choose. These are uniquely challenging for schools to offer as they’re the only APs that require teachers to attend a week-long training.

Last year, I asked my AP Seminar students, all of whom were 10th and 11th graders, what the longest paper they had written in other classes. The vast majority said it was four or five paragraphs. In AP Seminar, they write a 1,200- and 2,000-word paper. In AP Research, they write a 4,000-word paper whose demands are higher than anything I did as an undergrad.

What are the drawbacks of the virtual teaching program?

I lose 5-10 minutes of class every day to students logging on and putting away computers at the end of class. There are days when the internet is down. I don’t overhear side conversations students are having while they’re working. What I offer students, however, far outweighs these drawbacks.

How do you build a learning community given that the students in your classes may come from multiple schools?

While it takes more time to do it, what creates community and engagement isn’t different. Just like in the classroom, I build community with students by asking them questions and really listening to them. They build relationships with each other by working and talking together. While I might not notice as quickly if a student is not engaged, my onsite partner in the classroom will and will let me know so I can reach out to that student.

How do you approach classroom management?

The rare times that significant things happen, the approach to them will depend on how my onsite partner wants to handle things. I have partners who want to take care of everything on their own without involving me; I have others who let me know what’s happening and want me to be the one to address them. I’m fine either way and both work well.

What’s something happening in the community that affects what goes on inside your classroom?

The day after the election, I went to teach my U.S. History classes in person [nearly all of the students in those classes attended the same schools]. I asked students what, if anything, they were most worried about. About half of my students wrote that they were worried that friends, family members, or themselves could face deportation. There is real fear and unease right now.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?

When I was student teaching, a math teacher at the school suggested that I create a “Happy Folder” filled with thank you’s, work from challenging students who finally got it, and those letters teachers get from students years after leaving their classrooms about how they finally got a lesson.

He told me this was his most valuable possession and that if his house was ever on fire, it would be the first thing he would save after his kids. I followed that advice and started my own folder, which continues to grow each year. The folder has saved me from the depths of despair more times than I can count.

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

NYC’s school safety force has shrunk by nearly a third. Principals are raising alarms.

2025-03-10T22:50:05+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

As Principal Mark House greeted students at the John F. Kennedy campus in the Bronx last month, a student staggered toward him, face covered in blood.

Initially, House thought the 16-year-old had been in an accident and started escorting him to the on-site health clinic. But on the way there, the student collapsed. It turned out he had been stabbed.

In past years, school safety agents patrolled near the site of the attack, a stone’s throw from the school entrance. But no one was stationed outside that morning due to a significant decline in agents assigned to the complex.

The campus once had upwards of 20 school safety agents. Now it typically has 10 or fewer, House said. He believes the presence of an agent could have helped.

“It’s a question of prevention. If an adult is standing there in an NYPD uniform, there is a much lower probability that the violent incident happens,” said House, a veteran principal who leads Bronx Engineering and Technology Academy, one of seven schools serving a combined 2,400 students in Kingsbridge’s JFK campus.

A profound change has quietly taken root in the city’s school safety system in recent years, and the situation at the JFK campus vividly illustrates the fallout many school leaders fear it’s causing.

The number of school safety agents — unarmed but uniformed New York Police Department employees stationed at schools — has plunged from about 5,000 to 3,600 over the past five years, a roughly 28% drop, according to data from the Independent Budget Office and NYPD. K-12 enrollment shrunk by 11% during the same period.

The declines have been driven by various factors: high attrition during the pandemic fueled by the COVID vaccine mandate, slow hiring in recent years, and a $37,000 annual starting salary.

Large high school campuses like JFK that depend on safety agents to operate metal detectors have been hardest hit, as they often do not have enough staff to run the machines, making students late for class as they snake through long lines during arrival.

School leaders have raised alarms about the issue. Some campuses have seen their rosters of school safety agents cut by half or more in recent years, according to more than 120 school administrators and staffers who signed an open letter to NYPD and Education Department officials in November calling on the city to hire additional agents and replace broken scanners.

The shortage of agents makes it harder to keep campuses open on nights and weekends for extracurricular activities, since agents are often required to be on site, school leaders said. And there are rarely enough agents available to do perimeter patrols that used to be commonplace during arrival and dismissal.

Some principals said they don’t have enough excess school staff to help monitor those transitions, and even if they did, the staffers don’t have the training to respond to a violent incident.

At the JFK campus, city officials reacted to the stabbing by adding about five additional agents, House said. And while the student who was attacked is recovering, the incident left the community shaken.

“It’s devastating,” House said. “To have [a student] bleeding in your arms is pretty awful.”

Fears of a looming school safety crisis

While the ranks of safety agents shrunk during the pandemic, the number of weapons showing up at schoolhouse doors surged — with students often reporting that they’re trying to protect themselves on their commutes. That’s created a daunting safety challenge for many schools.

Some principals fear the decline in safety agents may snowball into a broader crisis.

Other educators and advocates, however, see the reduced police presence as a step in the right direction after warning for years about school police criminalizing minor misbehavior, particularly among Black and Latino children. On certain campuses, school leaders partner with community organizations whose staff help supervise dismissal and defuse conflicts rather than relying solely on safety agents.

“Politicians and school leaders have chosen to harden schools for over 40 years, and it just doesn’t work,” said Andrea Ortiz, from the Dignity in Schools coalition, which opposes NYPD and metal detectors in schools. Ortiz supports hiring more staff to help with safety during arrival and dismissal — though not NYPD employees.

Large high school campuses like JFK, pictured here, have been hardest hit by the school safety agent shortage.

But even as some school administrators are open to alternatives to safety agents, many are frustrated that there has not been a systemic response to the shortage.

Neither the Education Department nor the NYPD responded to the November letter about the lack of safety agents, said Michael Barakat, the principal of the Bronx High School for Law and Community Service, one of the letter’s authors.

“The fact that there’s been absolutely no response,” Barakat said, “is alarming.”

Education Department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein did not dispute that the agency had not responded to the letter, noting school safety agents are under the NYPD’s purview.

“We recognize that our city is facing a shortage of school safety agents, and we are continuing to work with our partners at NYPD School Safety to mitigate these issues,” she wrote in an email.

An NYPD spokesperson said the agency is “always ready and willing to recruit for the School Safety Division.” They did not cite any specific efforts to significantly increase the number of agents.

A decline years in the making

The city’s school safety division rivals the size of many other cities’ police forces and has long sparked fierce debate.

Critics note that safety agents often respond to crises better left to counselors. Others counter that large majorities of students, parents, and teachers believe the agents help keep schools safe, though students at predominantly Black campuses are less likely to agree.

Pressure to overhaul school policing reached a boiling point amid the racial justice protests of 2020. Facing calls from progressive lawmakers to reduce the NYPD’s budget, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio planned to move the roughly $400 million school safety division to the Education Department. But de Blasio slow-walked the transfer, and Mayor Eric Adams abandoned it.

In the meantime, the school safety force continued to shrink. Despite his supportive rhetoric, Adams has not taken significant action to restore the number of school safety agents to pre-pandemic levels — and even helped solidify its smaller size.

Hank Sheinkopf, a spokesperson for the school safety agents union, placed the blame for the shrinking numbers on elected officials who have pushed to limit the NYPD’s footprint in schools, including comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams.

Williams told Chalkbeat he wants a “just transition” to a new system that doesn’t include “letting go of the workforce.” Lander said in a statement that school safety agents’ wages are “far too low and there has not been enough investment into training or maintaining their workforce.”

One veteran school safety agent in the Bronx, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said “many people don’t want to join” the school safety division because of the pay. The NYPD’s recent move to loosen the eligibility requirements for police officers amid a shortage of cops might draw even more people away from the school safety division, the agent said.

NYPD officials announced a plan in 2023 to hire 650 “assistant school safety agents,” a new position with a $33,000 starting salary open to high school graduates 18 and older. The city has yet to hire any, police officials said during a City Council hearing.

School entry wait times balloon

The shortage of school safety agents created a “perfect storm” this fall, said Evan Schwartz, principal of Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical Education High School in the Bronx. Without enough agents to operate the metal detectors, the building sometimes opened late.

“It just backs it up [with] students waiting outside,” Schwartz said, noting the delays eased several weeks into the school year. “If it’s raining, there’s not anywhere for them to be.”

Staffing issues can create additional safety risks by keeping kids clustered outside for longer in big groups.

At the Theodore Roosevelt Campus in the Bronx, which serves 2,500 students, there’s often a line around the block because at least one of the campus’ three scanners isn’t running, said Barakat.

Bashar Assaedi, a 14-year-old freshman at the Bronx Academy for Software Engineering, said it’s frustrating to get marked tardy when “you got to school on time, but metal detectors [that make you] take off your jackets, any keys, any watches, rings” cause delays.

Some educators and students, including Assaedi, would rather get rid of metal detectors altogether, arguing that caring relationships with staff are more effective deterrents against students using weapons in school.

But others, like Barakat, say the machines help keep students out of danger, and school staffers are not allowed to operate them.

Schools experiment with alternative approaches

The steep drop in school safety agents has left administrators confronting difficult questions about how to keep kids safe during arrival and dismissal, when conflicts are most likely to break out.

Some schools have seen promising results by tapping organizations that specialize in violence interruption, where community members are trained to de-escalate conflicts as an alternative to police intervention.

The Spring Creek Community School in Brooklyn’s East New York hired the group Elite Learners through the Education Department’s Project Pivot initiative, which brought community organizations into more than 300 schools for extra support at a cost of $14 million this year.

Employees with Elite Learners help diffuse incidents outside Spring Creek Community School through a city program called Project Pivot.

Elite’s employees typically fan out around the school’s exit and the surrounding blocks, clad in gray jackets with bright orange letters. In one recent instance, a group of men across the street wanted to fight several students, said officials at the Academy of Young Writers, one of the schools in the building. Elite staffers intervened and contacted the police.

“There’s definitely been a decrease in incidents outside of the school,” said Principal Tanisha Brown.

But partnerships like the one at the Spring Creek school are not yet widespread. Just 50 or so of the roughly 320 schools receiving Project Pivot funding are using it for “safe passages” programs, an Education Department spokesperson said.

House, the principal who recently responded to the stabbing, is open to other approaches to school safety. But he said that should be a long-term project that solicits community input, examines what other districts have done, and proposes a clear alternative.

Until that happens, House believes more safety agents are necessary.

Right now, “We’re still playing the ‘if’ game: ‘If we had had somebody here, would that have made a difference?’” House said. “In another year or two, we’re not going to be speculating. We’re going to be drawing straight lines.”

This story has been updated with additional information from a Tuesday City Council hearing.

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.

After a yearslong battle, panel votes to close NYC’s smallest school

2025-02-27T02:09:25+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

An education panel voted Wednesday evening to close P.S. 25, New York City’s smallest school, following a yearslong battle to shutter it.

Only 53 students are currently enrolled in grades K-5, making it all but impossible for the Bedford-Stuyvesant school to offer a full suite of programs. With city funding directly tied to headcount, the school has struggled to pay for core academic instruction, such as special education teachers, as well as art and extracurriculars, District 16 Superintendent Brendan Mims said Wednesday.

The city’s Panel for Educational Policy, a majority of which is appointed by the mayor and must vote on major changes to schools, voted unanimously to close P.S. 25 at the end of the school year. Although the local Community Education Council supported the closure, several educators and caregivers voiced opposition, arguing the school should be given more time to reverse enrollment declines.

Meanwhile, the Education Department withdrew a separate proposal that was originally slated for a vote Wednesday to shutter M.S. 394, another school with dwindling enrollment.

P.S. 25 is an extreme example of a deepening problem: The number of tiny schools has exploded in recent years as enrollment plummeted during the pandemic and has not rebounded. About 190 campuses enroll fewer than 200 students, more than twice as many as in 2016. Small schools are expensive to operate on a per-student basis and struggle to afford basic programs. It cost $45,420 per child last year to operate P.S. 25, more than double the city average.

The city has largely turned to school mergers to address the issue, arguing that consolidating schools is often less disruptive than closing them, making the decision to shutter P.S. 25 an outlier. It is only the second school under Mayor Eric Adams to face closure.

P.S. 25 has fended off previous efforts to shut it down. When its enrollment slipped below 100 students seven years ago, city officials moved to close it. But a group of advocates filed a lawsuit challenging the closure, arguing the move required action from the local education council because it would have left some families without a zoned option, and the councils have authority over zoning. The city ultimately agreed to keep the school open.

This time around, the Education Department submitted rezoning plans that were approved earlier this month by the local education council, likely heading off a repeat of that legal battle.

“We have done all we can do — and it’s best to go ahead and close that school and get those families into a more stable environment,” said NeQuan McLean, president of the local education council, which unanimously voted in favor of closing the school. (The council’s vote is not binding.)

McLean noted that his council is also encouraging the Education Department to come up with a broader strategy for Brooklyn’s District 16 to address persistent enrollment challenges across schools in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

The city needs to “take a real deep look at enrollment in District 16, or we’re gonna be back next year and the year after talking about consolidations and mergers,” McLean said.

Vote to close M.S. 394 and open new ‘literacy academy’ delayed until April

Another Brooklyn school was spared from closure, at least for now, after members of the community pushed back against the city’s plans.

A proposal to close M.S. 394, a pre-K-8 school in Crown Heights, was scheduled for a vote in December. Education Department officials argued the school is too small and low-performing to stay open. It serves roughly 200 children, a 36% decline over the last five years. About 21% of students were considered proficient in reading last year and 25% in math. Citywide, 53% of students were proficient in math and 49% were in reading.

After several community members voiced opposition to the closure proposal at the December meeting, the panel voted to delay taking any action. The vote was rescheduled for Wednesday evening, but the Education Department abruptly removed it from the agenda. An Education Department spokesperson said they plan to reschedule the vote for April.

Delaying the closure decision for the second time also affects a brand-new school geared toward students with reading challenges that the Education Department hopes to open in the same building. The city’s plans to open the new school, known as the Central Brooklyn Literacy Academy, are tied to the closure of M.S. 394.

Some parents previously said they were frustrated the city was investing in a new school rather than working to revitalize M.S. 394 to attract more families.

“The kids who are already at 394, ultimately, why should they have to leave the school to bring in an institution that I feel will help benefit them as well?” Leon Gidron, a father of three children at the school, said during a public meeting in December. “Why not combine the two?”

Gregory Faulkner, who chairs the Panel for Educational Policy, said education officials are considering altering their proposal to slowly phase out M.S. 394, instead of closing it entirely at the end of the year, while clearing the path for the Central Brooklyn Literacy Academy to open. He suggested some M.S. 394 students could get priority to attend the new school. (An Education Department spokesperson did not respond to a question about whether the city plans to alter its closure proposal.)

Faulkner said the level of community opposition to the closure plan caught him off guard.

“I’ve been talking to parents in 394 to find out … if there’s some kind of a compromise that will work for them,” Faulkner said, adding that the details are still in flux. He noted that Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos personally visited the school this week.

“We prioritize family engagement, including in connection with school closures and openings, which have deep impacts on surrounding communities,” Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull wrote in an email. “We will continue engaging with families, educators, and community members to ensure transparency and collaboration in this process.”

Still, the Education Department’s decision to postpone the vote leaves M.S. 394 families in limbo about whether they will need to find a new school for their children next year. And the further delay may complicate efforts for the Central Brooklyn Literacy Academy to recruit students and educators in time to open in September if the proposal is ultimately approved.

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

After pressure from families, NYC schools chancellor reaffirms support for LGBTQ+ students

2025-02-25T00:43:58+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

New York City schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos reaffirmed the public school system’s support for LGBTQ+ students in a letter to families on Monday, stating the Education Department’s policies and guidelines remain in effect, despite a flurry of recent executive orders from President Donald Trump.

“We are committed to maintaining a safe and supportive environment for all students — one that is free from discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and bullying,” Aviles-Ramos said in the letter. “As I recently shared with over 1,000 students and staff attending our seventh annual Gender and Sexuality Alliance Summit, at New York City Public Schools, we see you, we support you, and we value you.”

The statement — which did not directly refer to Trump or his executive orders — comes weeks after parents criticized the Education Department for failing to issue a systemwide response to efforts by the federal government to restrict how schools support gender nonconforming students and teach issues of race in the classroom.

In the letter, the schools chancellor directed families to the city’s guidelines on gender — which include policies instructing staff to address students by their preferred pronouns at school, offering schools some discretion to not inform parents when a student is socially transitioning in cases where a family doesn’t accept their gender identity, and allowing students to join sports teams and use bathrooms consistent with their gender identities.

A spokesperson for the Education Department confirmed no policies had changed in light of Trump’s executive orders.

Last week, the Education Department also republished a series of videos focused on LGBTQ+ history that had been developed with WNET, the local PBS affiliate, after the broadcasting network deleted the videos from its site. Those videos drew on material from part of the city’s “Hidden Voices” curriculum that focused on uplifting the stories of prominent LGBTQ+ people.

Still, some parents were concerned over the lack of specificity in the chancellor’s letter.

Gavin Healy, a Manhattan parent and member of District 2’s Community Education Council, or CEC, said he was disappointed that the letter did not specifically express support for transgender students at a time when their rights have been under attack by the Trump administration.

In recent weeks, Trump has sought to withhold federal funding from schools that allow trans girls to join sports teams consistent with their gender identities. He has also issued executive orders seeking to prevent schools from teaching “gender ideology,” a phrase Trump and his supporters have used to broadly refer to discussions of gender identity or the existence of transgender people.

In other executive orders, Trump has looked to restrict access to gender-affirming care for transgender children and teenagers, and to define gender as a male-female binary that cannot be changed.

Efforts to erode protections for trans students have also occurred locally. Last year, District 2’s CEC passed a resolution calling on the city to reconsider its sports policy for transgender students. At the time, then-Chancellor David Banks condemned the proposal as “despicable.”

Healy felt that Aviles-Ramos should have explicitly mentioned transgender students and recent attacks on their rights to participate in sports at school, given the rhetoric of the Trump administration, as well as his own community education council.

“People are trying to question the existence and the rights of students to be their authentic selves through this red herring of an issue,” he said, ”and by not taking a stand, I think she just kind of lets them do that.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

NYC council postpones school segregation hearing amid fears of Trump administration scrutiny

2025-02-24T22:51:26+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

The latest aftershock from President Donald Trump’s recent federal guidance threatening to investigate schools advancing diversity efforts: a long-awaited New York City Council oversight hearing on racial segregation in the nation’s largest school system has been postponed indefinitely.

The hearing aimed to give city lawmakers a chance to publicly question Education Department officials on their efforts to integrate city schools 70 years after Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended legal segregation in public schools. Originally scheduled for Wednesday, the hearing was postponed due to concerns that it could expose the city to interference from the Trump administration, multiple sources familiar with the situation said.

The council has not yet set a new date, according to its website.

The decision followed a Feb. 14 Dear Colleague letter from the Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education advising schools and districts that admissions policies seeking to boost racial diversity, even if they’re not explicitly race based, are illegal and subject to federal investigation.

Dozens of schools across New York City set aside a portion of their seats for students who are learning English, live in temporary housing, or come from low-income families as part of a Diversity in Admissions program.

Lawyers from both the city Education Department and the council urged lawmakers to postpone the hearing to give the city more time to understand the legal implications of the letter and to avoid drawing unwanted scrutiny or an investigation, according to three sources familiar with the situation.

“What we don’t want is to have the [New York City Department of Education] being subpoenaed in D.C., and having all the equity issues aired so Elon Musk can tweet it out … and they come for us,” said one of the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to share internal conversations. Musk, the billionaire and chief executive officer of Tesla, heads up the Department of Government Efficiency, a cost-cutting team that has enacted sweeping cuts across the federal government, including the cancellation of hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts through the U.S. Department of Education.

Trump administration’s chilling effect

The postponement is an early tangible consequence of the federal letter, which is part of a larger effort by the Trump administration to purge equity-focused policies from public schools. Trump has also issued executive orders threatening to withhold federal funding from schools that support gender-nonconforming students and teach about the prevalence of racism in American life.

Experts have said the latest federal guidance on school diversity efforts clearly misstates existing legal precedent that gives K-12 schools flexibility to use non-racial admissions criteria to boost diversity, but have warned that it could nonetheless create a chilling effect.

Brooklyn Council member Rita Joseph, chair of the council education committee, and Queens Council member Nantasha Williams, the chair of the council committee on human and civil rights, who were jointly running the hearing, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Council spokesperson Rendy Desamours said the council plans to hold the hearing in the future, but didn’t provide a specific date or comment on the reasons for the postponement. An Education Department spokesperson declined to comment on the postponement of the council hearing but noted the Dear Colleague letter “doesn’t create any new legal obligations” for the city school system, and that no policies have changed.

School integration had already garnered less focus lately

New York City’s schools remain among the most segregated in the nation, but the issue has largely faded from the spotlight under Mayor Eric Adams, whose administration has not prioritized aggressive citywide integration efforts and reversed some reforms meant to open access to selective schools during the pandemic.

The City Council hearing, which was first announced last May, would have been a rare public opportunity to hear Education Department officials speak at length about the state of the city’s school diversity efforts.

The Dear Colleague letter warns that “relying on non-racial information as a proxy for race” for admissions purposes is illegal and explicitly cautions schools against eliminating standardized testing from admissions requirements as a means of achieving racial balance in schools.

Both of those policies are at the center of long-running conversations about how to diversify schools in New York City, which often select students based on academic results and other criteria.

A growing number of city schools have opted into the Diversity in Admissions program in recent years, in many cases significantly boosting their racial diversity along the way. Several districts have implemented middle school diversity plans that have made significant progress in racially integrating schools.

The city has also moved away from using test results in admissions, removing state test results as admissions criteria for many selective high schools and scrapping the entrance exam for kindergarten gifted and talented programs. Eight specialized high schools, including Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, still use an admissions exam, which is codified in state law.

Officials from both the City Council and Education Department worried that discussing those initiatives in a public hearing could bring unwanted attention and put them in the crosshairs of a federal administration that has targeted education programs after they were highlighted on right-wing social media accounts, according to the sources.

“We’re just trying to protect what we have,” said one of the sources. “It doesn’t go nearly far enough, but [we’re] just trying to protect it.”

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

Mold, dust, and a severe allergy: Guidance counselor sues NYC schools for refusing transfer

2025-02-20T22:21:05+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

A guidance counselor who faced debilitating allergic reactions at her Manhattan elementary school filed suit against the Education Department last week, claiming the city’s refusal to transfer her violates disability laws.

Shortly after starting work at Manhattan’s P.S. 28 in September 2021, Heiny Nunez began experiencing severe migraines that escalated into bouts of dizziness, heart palpitations, trouble breathing, and swelling that was so extreme she couldn’t open her eyes — eventually landing her in the emergency room.

Those symptoms receded when she left the school building — which the suit says is “filled with mold, dust, and mouse droppings” — leading Nunez and her doctors to conclude the environment at P.S. 28 was the cause. But despite repeated requests to transfer to a new school, the Education Department pointed to a policy that requires three years of service in a role before an employee can apply for a “hardship transfer” to another campus.

Heiny Nunez claims New York City Public Schools violated the law in denying her a transfer after she experienced a series of extreme allergic reactions.

The suit contends the city violated the federal Americans with Disabilities Act and state and local human rights laws. It asks the Education Department to “eliminat[e] the requirement that an employee with a disability must have served in their position for at least three years before qualifying for a transfer as a reasonable accommodation for their disability.” And it seeks to force the city to transfer Nunez and provide unspecified monetary damages.

“DOE has flagrantly breached the basic legislative prohibition against discriminating because of a disability,” according to the suit, filed last week in federal court. “DOE has denied multiple reasonable accommodation requests from [Nunez] for placement in a different school.”

Education Department officials declined to comment on the lawsuit. In response to a complaint Nunez filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, an official in the department’s legal office wrote that her “allegations of discrimination are baseless.”

Nunez contends that she worked hard to find solutions, visiting a slew of doctors and trying several different treatments, including a sinus surgery in 2022. She experimented with wearing masks and face shields and taking breaks in her office with the lights off. Her symptoms still returned.

She has spent more than two of the last three years on unpaid leave, forcing her to raid her retirement account, borrow money from relatives, and accept financial assistance from a private donor facilitated by The Legal Aid Society, which is representing her in the case alongside the law firm Freshfields. Her time on unpaid leave does not count toward the three-year rule for hardship transfers.

“I haven’t been able to pay any bills,” Nunez said in a recent interview, adding that she received an eviction notice on her Bronx apartment. “This is my career, but my health comes first. And if I’m not healthy I’m not going to be able to go to work.”

Nunez started her career in the school system a decade ago as a substitute paraprofessional, and she often ping-ponged between campuses across the city without experiencing a severe allergic reaction, the suit notes. She has applied to dozens of other schools through the regular hiring process, but hasn’t been able to land a job in part because those principals have access to records that reveal she is currently on leave, Nunez contends.

A hardship transfer would allow the Education Department to directly place her in a different campus, which she believes would solve the problem.

Education Department officials have taken some steps to accommodate Nunez, including repainting her office, providing air purifiers, new filters for the air conditioning, and regular cleaning, the lawsuit acknowledged. But Nunez and her doctors contended those efforts didn’t reduce her symptoms.

In response to Nunez’s complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Education Department officials claimed they engaged in an “interactive process” with Nunez to set up accommodations at her current school, including the use of air purifiers. They also noted that “inquiries were made to Manhattan and Bronx schools about available vacancies,” but the city “was not able to identify available vacancies in her certification area.”

Officials argued the rule spelled out in the United Federation of Teachers contract that prohibits hardship transfers within an employee’s first three years “reflects the NYCDOE’s need to maintain staff stability and experience and avoid force-placement of less experienced staff into schools.”

Richard Blum, a lawyer at The Legal Aid Society representing Nunez, disputed that the city had engaged in an interactive process as required by law to find an accommodation that would allow Nunez to work.

“They don’t have to give you the accommodation that you ask for if they can come up with one that works,” Blum said. But the accommodation didn’t work and the city ignored that, he added. Nunez “had no opportunity to engage in a dialogue with DOE about a suitable accommodation for her disability,” the suit claims.

Blum emphasized that the decision not to grant Nunez a transfer prevents her from working as a guidance counselor despite widespread concerns about student mental health.

“Are we really in such a glut of teachers and guidance counselors that we want to wean them out based on disability?” he said. “It’s not only illegal, it’s kind of crazy.”

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

LGBTQ history videos find new home after PBS pulls content due to Trump executive orders

2025-02-19T20:57:48+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

In response to a blizzard of executive orders from President Donald Trump, the Public Broadcasting Service recently erased a series of videos made in partnership with New York City Public Schools focused on LGBTQ history.

This week, the city’s Education Department found a new home for them: its own website.

The short films draw on material from the city’s LGBTQ-focused curriculum, part of a series called “Hidden Voices” that seeks to elevate a broad range of underrepresented groups students learn about in their social studies classrooms.

The videos profile prominent LGBTQ people such as the feminist thinker Audre Lorde and civil rights leader Bayard Rustin. They also survey key historical moments, including the mass dismissal of queer government employees during the Lavender Scare of the 1940s-’60s and the 1969 Stonewall uprising in Greenwich Village, widely considered a catalyst of the modern LGBTQ rights movement.

The city partnered with WNET, the local PBS affiliate, to produce the videos, and the broadcaster distributed them on its website. City Council allocated nearly $600,000 in discretionary funding to WNET in recent years to create LGBTQ curriculum resources, city records show.

The public broadcasting network’s decision to delete the videos, first reported by the news site Hell Gate, represented one of the first examples of Trump’s executive orders resulting in restricted access to curriculum materials developed for New York City teachers. Historians who helped create the LGBTQ curriculum and accompanying videos said they were glad the Education Department republished them, but worried the materials may now be less accessible.

“The fact that it’ll continue to exist on the internet is great,” said Daniel Hurewitz, a historian who served as a lead author of the LGBTQ Hidden Voices curriculum and wrote scripts for some of the videos. “At the same time, I’m confident that PBS as a website has a bigger reach.”

Hurewitz began to suspect something was amiss shortly after Trump’s inauguration, when he noticed one of the videos he helped create had vanished from the PBS website.

The film, which won a New York Emmy Award, profiles Albert Cashier, an Irish immigrant who was assigned female at birth but lived as a man and fought in the Civil War. He was later outed and accused of fraudulently collecting a pension, but his fellow soldiers came to his defense.

Representatives of PBS and WNET, the city’s local PBS station that helped produce the videos, did not respond to questions about why they pulled the films. A PBS spokesperson confirmed to Hell Gate that the videos were scrubbed in response to Trump’s executive orders but did not specify which one.

One order threatens to withhold federal funding for schools that teach “gender ideology” or “discriminatory equity ideology,” while another attempts to root out diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the federal government. In response, PBS recently closed its DEI office.

Stacie Brensilver Berman, a New York University professor who studies how schools teach LGBTQ history and helped create the Hidden Voices curriculum guides, said one silver lining is the videos may become more clearly associated with the Education Department.

“Having them on the DOE website, even though it’s happening for all the wrong reasons, demonstrates the connection between the videos and the Hidden Voices written materials, which I think can be important in terms of teachers thinking about how to use them,” she said. “It might not be the statement they’re trying to make at all, but it does in my mind signal to LGBTQ students and teachers that the DOE is supporting them.”

A city Education Department spokesperson did not comment on the decision to post the videos. Some parts of the department’s website still link to a PBS site where the videos are not available.

Brensilver Berman hopes that PBS will return the materials to its website as well, though she noted that the organization may continue to be in a difficult position because of its reliance on public dollars. About 16% of PBS funding comes from the federal government.

For his part, Hurewitz worries that broader attacks on teaching about LGBTQ people and their history will have tangible consequences for students across the country.

“We know for sure it makes life better for queer kids if there’s queer representation in the curriculum,” Hurewitz said.

He added: “When people become invisible then it’s very easy to demonize them and criminalize them.”

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

One way to retain more Black teachers in NYC schools? Black principals, new research finds.

2025-02-10T22:28:27+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Malik Lewis was one of few Black educators at Brooklyn’s Automotive High School when he started his teaching career there in 2005 — a fact that made him feel “absolutely out of place.”

Though almost all of his students were Black and Latino, many of his colleagues and his school leaders were white, and Lewis struggled to make connections with his coworkers, he recalled.

He left after just a year. For his next job, he tried to find the “Blackest school possible.”

He landed at Boys and Girls High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where his principal, most other administrators, and many of his colleagues were Black. Lewis flourished there, making lasting connections and launching a long career in New York City’s public schools.

New research suggests that Lewis’ experiences are not isolated.

Researchers from New York University who examined nearly a decade of teacher turnover data from New York City public schools found that, while Black teachers left their jobs at higher rates overall than other groups, having a Black principal and a critical mass of Black colleagues made them significantly more likely to stay.

Two decades later, Lewis is a principal, and he finds Black teachers actively seeking out his school — and staying. His teaching staff at West Brooklyn Community High School, where the student body is largely Latino, is almost half Black, far higher than the 17% of teachers citywide who are Black.

“We don’t have to question how our Blackness shows up in work,” he said of West Brooklyn. “We are Black, and we are comfortable with that, we are proud of that, and we leverage that to teach children.”

Working at a school with a Black principal reduced turnover by about 14% for Black teachers over the period of 2011 to 2020, according to the study published last month in the journal “Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.” Working at a school where at least 20% of other teachers were Black had a similar effect for Black teachers, the researchers found.

The findings are significant because there’s strong evidence that teachers of color bring a range of educational benefits, said Luis Rodriguez, a professor at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, and a lead author of the study.

The benefits for students of color are well documented, and include lower rates of discipline, more placement in gifted programs, and better graduation and college outcomes. Some researchers also argue that white students can gain greater cross-cultural understanding from having teachers of color, and in a national survey, white students reported more favorable impressions of teachers of color, according to research cited in the study. But teachers of color remain underrepresented and have higher rates of turnover, both locally and nationally, than their white peers, said Rodriguez.

The study comes as efforts to diversify teaching may face new threats nationally, with President Donald Trump seeking to curtail Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives through a barrage of executive orders.

New York City has made progress in recent years diversifying its teaching force, but white educators still make up more than half of the teaching force and more than half of school administrators. About 16% of city public school students are white.

As of the 2022-2023 school year, about 24% of principals and assistant principals were Black, but the Education Department didn’t immediately provide a breakdown of just principals.

‘Similarity attraction’ a key driver of findings

The study’s central findings are likely explained by what social psychologists call “similarity attraction,” or a tendency to surround ourselves with people with shared characteristics, Rodriguez said.

Shamella Jeffers, an English and special education teacher at West Brooklyn who is Black, has gravitated toward Black teachers since she was a student. One of those former teachers is Lewis, who taught Jeffers U.S. History in high school and is now her principal at West Brooklyn.

“I’m trying to stay here for as long as humanly possible,” Jeffers said. “Because I don’t think that when I come to work, it feels like it’s work.” She also credited Assistant Principal Ingrid Roberts-Haynes, who is also Black, for “beautifying” the school and hanging African kente cloth in classrooms.

“It’s just a vibe from the beginning of the day until the end,” she said.

Sasha Fletcher, a Black English teacher at West Brooklyn, came to her current job after working at three schools with white principals — and often feeling like she didn’t get the support she needed.

Finding a Black principal who “has an understanding of what teachers of color need in their corner” was a “deciding factor” in her job search, she said.

Fletcher credited her current principal, Lewis, for spending time in classrooms and connecting directly with students, which in turn gives him a better sense of what teachers need.

Some of the reasons it’s appealing for Black teachers to work with Black supervisors and colleagues might apply in other workplaces. But others are specific to education — particularly in school systems where the vast majority of students are not white, Lewis said.

“Education is probably one of the most politically charged fields you can work in,” Lewis said. “We’re talking about issues of equity and justice. We’re making selective decisions about what is and isn’t canonical books and … what things you should teach.

“So when you have administration and teachers that are on the same page about making sure their experience is reflected in the curriculum and the way they teach, I think that helps.”

Findings apply beyond Black teachers

It’s not just Black teachers who are more likely to stay in schools where they have a principal of the same race, the study found. Turnover also decreased for white teachers who have white principals, though not by the same degree as it did for Black teachers, the NYU research found.

Notably, the finding did not apply for Hispanic teachers, Rodriguez said.

He suggested that might be in part because the category of “Hispanic” encompasses a “broader, more diverse array of backgrounds” than other racial and ethnic categories, which may mean there’s less “racial and ethnic cohesion.”

Roberts-Haynes, the West Brooklyn assistant principal, cautioned that the Black experience is also “wide-ranging.” Black educators in the city hail from a variety of national and cultural backgrounds, and it would be a mistake to assume Black school leaders can just automatically understand those experiences, she said.

The sample size for Asian American educators, who are the most underrepresented group of teachers in New York City vis-a-vis the share of students of that group, was too small to include in the study, Rodriguez said.

But Nico Victorino, the principal of P.S. 150 in Manhattan, who is Filipino-American, said a disproportionate share of his hires have been teachers of color, many of whom have explicitly expressed interest in working for a principal who’s not white, he said.

“Teachers would say that I would ‘get it’ more than a white principal would,” he recalled.

Rodriguez said districts could use some of the same approaches they’ve tried for boosting teacher diversity to diversify the ranks of school principals. Those include scholarship mentorship programs for aspiring school leaders of color, and ensuring the people above principals in superintendents’ and central offices also come from diverse backgrounds.

Lewis said something as simple as building more time into mandatory principals’ meetings to recognize and celebrate school leaders’ identities could help. That would help Black principals feel like “they belong in those places,” he said. “Not that they have to put their Blackness aside to participate in the meeting, but it’s essential to the meeting.”

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

NYC schools to bolster translation services to families with limited English after lawsuit

2025-02-06T22:51:16+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Under a new court settlement, New York City education officials will soon be required to beef up training and oversight at schools to ensure they are providing translation services for families who don’t primarily speak English.

The agreement stems from a 2019 federal civil rights lawsuit that alleged a “pattern and practice” of failing to provide interpretation services across the nation’s largest school system. Families were unable to access communications about bullying, lead contamination, and even serious medical conditions, the lawsuit claimed. In one instance, a family who requested an interpreter for a meeting was asked by school officials, “Why don’t you learn English?”

About 356,000 of the city’s public school students came from families who primarily speak a language other than English at home last school year, or roughly 44% of students, a population larger than the entire enrollment of Chicago Public Schools. Since the summer of 2022, New York City has seen an influx of about 48,000 newcomer students, many of whom are migrants who do not speak English, underscoring the importance of widespread interpretation services.

Under the terms of the new legal settlement finalized last week, the Education Department will expand “language access training” for a range of staff including principals, parent coordinators, and school nurses. The training will emphasize parents’ rights, best practices for interpretation, and how to make those services available, according to the settlement agreement. Central employees who help support schools, known as “language access coordinators,” will also receive enhanced training.

M’Ral Broodie-Stewart, a senior staff attorney at Legal Services NYC, which brought the lawsuit, is hopeful those efforts will pay off.

Translation for families has “not been happening on the ground in schools based on pure ignorance of the requirement to provide language access and how to actually get documents translated and how to get interpreters on the phone,” Broodie-Stewart said. “That’s been the biggest barrier for language access.”

The settlement requires city officials to collect more data on the number of requests for interpretation of documents and meetings that are fulfilled, though those figures will be reported to the plaintiffs confidentially. (City officials have previously made some of that information public.)

The Education Department agreed to send letters, conduct robocalls, and post on social media to remind families that language services are available, and it will post guidance for interpreting documents and meetings on its website. Officials must also create a new complaint form for families to report issues securing interpretation services.

Interpretation services are especially crucial for caregivers of students with disabilities who may struggle to advocate on their child’s behalf if evaluations, meetings, and special education learning plans aren’t properly translated. About 30% of the New York City students with disabilities have a home language other than English, Education Department officials said. Each of the four families involved in the 2019 lawsuit had children enrolled in public schools geared toward students with complex disabilities.

The responsibility to arrange translations of many special education documents and meetings has long rested primarily with school staff, leading to a patchwork system of finding outside vendors or recruiting staff to interpret even if they had limited language skills or knowledge of technical special education terms.

City officials have taken steps in recent years to centralize the process. In 2021, the Education Department agreed to translate special education learning plans for any student who needed it, instead of relying heavily on school staff. Last school year, the Education Department centrally translated 13,205 special education plans, up from 7,078 in the 2019-20 school year.

Still, even though all parents are eligible for their child’s special education plan to be interpreted, that process is not automatic and requires parents to request such services. Broodie-Stewart said it should be offered when schools meet with parents to craft the learning plan.

Much of the interpretation and translation process for day-to-day communication and meetings will still be handled by individual schools, Broodie-Stewart added, though she said there will be enhanced oversight from the Education Department.

Hui Qin Liu, who speaks Mandarin and has a child with autism, previously told Chalkbeat that she struggled to understand why requests for feeding therapy went unaddressed or why her daughter’s physical therapy services were reduced. She also struggled to communicate with the school about why her child, who was nonverbal, came home with bruises and bite marks. The situation felt “hopeless,” said Liu, one of four families who were part of the lawsuit along with the Alliance for Families with Developmental Needs.

“It was like torture to not be able to get updates on my child, especially during emergency situations,” Liu said in a statement in response to the settlement agreement. “But I am now hopeful that others can get the translation and interpretation services they need to make sure their children are safe and are getting the academic supports they need to learn.”

Liu and the other three families will each receive $11,000 as part of the settlement.

After this story was published, Education Department officials offered a statement and noted that they have increased spending on language access programs from $5.2 million in fiscal year 2019 to $14 million last year.

“Our goal is to ensure that our translation and interpretation services are available to all parents and families in our community,” Education Department spokesperson Onika Richards wrote in a statement. “As we continue to make improvements, we encourage all parents and families to request the services they need directly through schools or at schools.nyc.gov/hello.”

As part of the settlement, the Education Department did not admit to any wrongdoing.

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

High-scoring NYC schools win exemptions from Adams’ reading curriculum mandate

2025-02-04T22:51:41+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Two additional elementary schools have quietly won exemptions to Mayor Eric Adams’ sweeping reading curriculum mandate, bringing the total number to three.

Brooklyn’s P.S. 11 and Leaders of Excellence, Advocacy, and Discovery in the Bronx — which both use self-designed literacy programs and boast high reading scores — are not required to use one of the three city-approved curriculums, officials confirmed. The Brooklyn School of Inquiry, a gifted and talented program, was the first campus granted an exemption.

The decision to allow additional schools to sidestep the curriculum mandate, known as NYC Reads, is likely to raise eyebrows because Education Department officials have not explained what criteria they are using to grant waivers, nor have they laid out an official process for requesting an exemption. The move could prompt campuses with strong track records or that have spent years honing their own curriculums to push harder to be released from the mandate, which expanded to all elementary schools this past fall.

Top Education Department officials previously indicated that schools with reading proficiency of 85% or above would be considered for an exemption, a threshold that 36 schools meet, though a spokesperson declined to say if the city is using that standard.

P.S. 11 and Leaders of Excellence, Advocacy, and Discovery, also known as LEAD 359, have posted some of the highest reading scores on state tests in the city. Both have also won Blue Ribbon honors from the federal government.

“We created our curriculum in-house looking at research-based practices,” said LEAD 359 Principal Alexa Sorden, who founded the school in 2013. “We basically have a well-oiled machine and didn’t want to disrupt it.”

LEAD 359, known previously as Concourse Village Academy, has won high-profile recognition for its focus on rigorous reading instruction and has served as a model for other campuses. All of the school’s students who took the state reading test last year were considered proficient, a notable achievement given that 83% of the school’s students come from low-income families. About 94% of the school’s students are Black or Latino.

At P.S. 11 in Clinton Hill — a diverse campus where just over half of students are Black and one-third come from low-income families — 91% of students were considered proficient on the state reading test.

Citywide, about 43% of students from low-income families in grades 3-8 are considered proficient readers. Across the system, 49% of children are considered proficient.

Adams has repeatedly pointed to the citywide reading scores as evidence that the city’s approach to literacy instruction is flawed. Schools previously had wide discretion to choose their own curriculums, and hundreds of principals had chosen a program created by Teachers College Professor Lucy Calkins that became increasingly discredited for not focusing enough on basic reading skills.

Now, elementary schools must use one of three programs that city officials say line up with the “science of reading,” a longstanding body of evidence about how children learn to read, alongside a separate phonics program that teaches the relationships between letters and sounds. The curriculum overhaul has won support from the city teachers union, though educators have expressed mixed reactions to the rollout, with some raising concerns about the quality of materials and training.

How did schools win waivers?

City officials have said little about how campuses can qualify for exemptions, leading school communities to take different approaches to securing them.

Families at the Brooklyn School of Inquiry mounted a monthslong campaign for an exemption last year, even after the local superintendent indicated that there was no process for granting one. Students from the school repeatedly showed up to public meetings attended by top education officials to critique the mandated curriculum, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Into Reading, arguing that it sapped their classes of rich discussions about full books because it focuses more heavily on shorter excerpts.

At P.S. 11, families pressed elected officials through a letter writing campaign, according to meeting minutes from the school’s parent association. They, too, were told no exemptions would be granted, according to meeting records. (Leaders of the parent association and the principal did not respond to interview requests.)

Parents at P.S. 11 participated in a letter writing campaign to win an exemption from the city's curriculum mandate.

On a recent afternoon after dismissal, several P.S. 11 parents said they were grateful the school won a waiver in part because they trusted the principal’s leadership and were impressed with their children’s reading skills.

At the public library around the corner, second grader Zoe Watkins was busy working on an assignment about Shirley Chisholm’s run for president, part of a Black History Month lesson.

“I think our school has been pretty amazing,” she said of the reading instruction before launching into a reaction to the Chisholm article. “What really stood out to me is her resilience and her braveness. … She could have gotten shut down by the government, but she still persisted.”

Meanwhile, at LEAD 359, there was no public pressure campaign for a waiver. Instead, the school leadership team, including educators, the principal, and parents, was able to persuade the superintendent’s office that the school’s curriculum was already following the science of reading.

The principal said district officials were “very open” to considering an exemption for the school. “They visited every literacy classroom,” said Sorden, who is also a trained reading specialist.

An Education Department spokesperson said the decision to issue exemptions to P.S. 11 and LEAD 359 came after conversations with their local superintendents and a review of their test scores. Both schools would have been required to use EL Education from Imagine Learning.

Although city officials would not say if the 85% proficiency threshold is being used to grant waivers, schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos echoed that figure recently while noting officials would also consider disparities in proficiency rates.

“If we see that the overall pass rate … is 85% but we disaggregate and we see that 39% of [multilingual learners] were not performing at grade level … we are going to be a lot more rigid about the curriculum,” Aviles-Ramos said during a recent town hall in Manhattan’s District 1.

Susan Neuman, a literacy expert at New York University who supports the curriculum changes, said ensuring that 85% of students are proficient across a range of demographic categories could be a reasonable method for awarding exemptions. Still, she argued that offering waivers to just three schools seemed arbitrary and called on the Education Department to publicly explain the process.

“There are plenty of schools that are doing just fine,” Neuman said. “Why exempt these?”

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

NYC parents push for statement from schools chancellor opposing Trump executive order on race, gender

2025-02-04T01:43:25+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Five days after President Donald Trump issued a sweeping executive order seeking to limit how schools support gender nonconforming students and teach about racism, New York City’s educational leaders have yet to issue a systemwide public response, sparking concerns from some parents and educators.

The executive order targeting “radical indoctrination” threatens to withhold federal funding from schools that support students in gender transitions or that teach about the prevalence of racism in American life.

Some education lawyers have questioned whether the order is lawful or enforceable, given the significant power of states and localities to control their own curriculum. Several states and districts have already sent out communications to families and educators pushing back on the order.

New York’s state Education Department issued a statement Monday sent to school staffers saying the executive order is “antithetical” to the U.S. Congress’ history of protecting vulnerable students through legislation. “We denounce the intolerant rhetoric of these orders,” the statement continued. “Our children cannot thrive in an environment of chaos; they need steady and stable leadership that we will endeavor to provide.”

But the response in the nation’s largest district — long a national leader in efforts to teach about racial inequity and support gender nonconforming students — has so far been more muted. The city Education Department has not sent any systemwide communication to families or educators, and it hasn’t issued specific guidance for administrators about the executive order, according to families and school staff.

Brooklyn mom Eliza Hittman, whose fifth-grader identifies as nonbinary, said she’s in multiple parent chats where there is a “tremendous amount of agitation” over the lack of communication from administrators.

“The silence is alarming,” Hittman said.

Asked at two recent parent town halls what the city is doing to protect LGBTQ+ students, New York City schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos reaffirmed that city schools do not tolerate any kind of hate.

“Our schools are expected to be safe spaces,” she said Monday at a town hall for District 30 in Queens.

Mark Rampersant, the chief of safety and prevention partnerships, added that New York City is one of the only school districts that has hired someone overseeing ways to foster inclusion for LGBTQ students. “Regardless of what happens on the top, we remain committed to ensuring the physical and well-being of every single one of our students,” he said.

But some parents and educators said the Education Department has not circulated that message widely enough at a time when fear is spreading quickly.

“What we need from our city leadership is … to give clarity and certainty and comfort in this time of chaos,” said Justin Krebs, the parent of a nonbinary child in Brooklyn’s District 15. “Instead, we’re hearing nothing from city leadership on this front.” He added that the city periodically sends notices to all families and he would “love to get that email” reiterating the city’s protections for LGBTQ+ students.

Education Department spokesperson Nicole Bronwstein didn’t say whether the agency plans to issue a systemwide statement, but said, “We are evaluating the Executive Order to determine if it will have any impact on New York City Public Schools.”

Brownstein said, “we remain steadfast in our commitment to fostering a safe, inclusive, and affirming environment where every student can thrive.” She added that the Education Department will ensure ”our school environment remains free from harassment, intimidation, and/or bullying, and free from discrimination of any kind.”

When asked whether she was concerned about the potential loss of federal funding, Aviles-Ramos said at a town hall last week, “We do not know what lies ahead in terms of federal funding,” which makes up about $2 billion of the Education Department’s annual budget.

Some parents and teachers want stronger message of support

Jo Macellaro, a Bronx teacher who identifies as nonbinary, said the lack of a clear public statement from the city sends educators “the message … that we don’t have your back, we’re not going to protect you.”

Absent that assurance, some teachers may decide they can’t take the risk of violating the executive order, Macellaro added. The Parent-Teacher Association from P.S. 139, a Brooklyn elementary school, wrote in a Monday letter to Aviles-Ramos that it’s “disconcerting that we have not received any sort of statement from you or other city or state leadership about this.”

Some parents suspect the city Education Department’s response is constrained by Mayor Eric Adams, who was indicted last fall on federal corruption charges. Trump has said he’s open to the idea of pardoning the mayor, and the U.S Department of Justice is reportedly weighing dropping the prosecution against Adams, who has pledged not to publicly criticize Trump’s policies. Adams has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges.

Gavin Healy, a Manhattan parent and member of the Community Education Council in District 2, said he thinks Adams’ political situation may be limiting the Education Department’s ability to respond. “I think doing what’s right for the students is hostage to the mayor’s legal issues and courting of the Trump administration.”

Existing policies offer strong protection for transgender students

The city Education Department’s policy on transgender and gender expansive students, which dates back more than a decade, instructs staff to address students by their preferred pronouns at school. It gives schools some discretion not to inform parents when a student is socially transitioning in cases where a family doesn’t accept their gender identity and allows students to use bathrooms and join sports teams that are consistent with their gender identities.

When Manhattan’s community education council in District 2 passed a resolution last year urging the city to reconsider its sports policy for transgender students, then-Chancellor David Banks rebuked the proposal as “despicable” and reaffirmed the city’s policy.

Krebs, the Brooklyn parent of a nonbinary student, said he’s not worried about his own child’s school. But in a system this large, without clear instructions from city leadership, some schools and educators might be reluctant to run afoul of the executive order, he said. Krebs drew an analogy to reports that NYU’s Langone Hospital halted gender-affirming medical care for some patients following a separate executive order banning the practice for people under age 19.

Some schools may “start complying in advance, the same way NYU Langone has,” he said, “when a school says, ‘You know what, to be on the safe side, we’re going to stop calling kids by their pronouns.’”

Johanna Miller, director of the education policy center at the New York Civil Liberties Union, noted that Trump’s executive order charges federal agencies with developing an enforcement plan, and it’s hard to say for sure how the order would be carried out until that happens. The executive order specifically mentions practices like using students’ preferred pronouns, referring to students as nonbinary, and allowing them to use bathrooms aligned with their gender identities as ones that may run afoul of the order. It also targets concepts like white privilege and unconscious bias.

But Miller said that state laws preventing bullying and harassment remain on the books.

“If an educator in New York State reads this executive order from Trump and decides on their own that they’re not going to comply with New York laws, they would be legally liable in that situation for not complying with the law,” she said.

Taking matters into their own hands

Some parent leaders are trying to push the city to issue a more forceful response.

Faraji Hannah-Jones, a member of the Community Education Council for District 13, told Aviles-Ramos at a town hall last week that he doesn’t “think that this office is ready for the shitstorm that is coming.

“I want to know, does your office have a backbone on these issues?” he asked.

Aviles-Ramos responded it’s “very sad to hear there’s a lack of faith in this administration.” She pointed to its work developing new curriculum including Black studies curriculum, for example.

Reached by phone Monday, Hannah-Jones said he’s been sounding the alarm about Trump’s education plans for months and has gotten little response from city officials. The Education Department is more “concerned about bringing us in a back room to have a conversation than having one in public,” he added.

Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, a parent in East Harlem and former member of the Panel for Educational Policy, an oversight panel for the city Education Department, drafted a mock resolution opposing the executive order that she hopes local Community Education Councils will modify and adopt.

“It’s our time to raise our voices,” she said.

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 for immigrant students to open in Queens despite pushback from school sharing its building

2025-01-23T23:43:42+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

A network of schools that exclusively serves newly arrived immigrants will be getting its first 6-12 school.

The new school, known as Queens International, won approval to open its doors this fall, following hours of debate during a contentious public meeting Wednesday evening.

Members of Ridgewood’s I.S. 77, the middle school it will share a building with, said the campus previously struggled with another school temporarily housed in its building. They also fear a new program could exacerbate enrollment declines at the school, which offers a Spanish dual language program.

Queens International will join the Internationals Network for Public Schools, which supports 17 public schools across New York City that exclusively cater to students who recently arrived from other countries. It will be the first middle school for new arrivals in Queens.

City officials said the new school will help accommodate a rapid increase in the number of migrant families — an estimated 48,000 newcomers have enrolled in local public schools since the summer of 2022. Queens public schools have absorbed the largest share of newcomers of the five boroughs, city officials said.

It’s unclear whether the city will continue to see such an influx in the coming years, or whether it might even see some people leave as local and federal officials attempt to reduce the flow of new migrants and the city faces an affordability crisis.

Approval to open the new international school comes as President Donald Trump has vowed to accelerate deportations and his administration this week rescinded a longstanding policy that limited immigration enforcement at schools and other sensitive locations. Mayor Eric Adams refrained from taking a clear stance on the shift.

Leaders of the Internationals Network previously said they have been preparing for a more hostile stance from the Trump administration. And the Panel for Educational Policy, which has the power to approve school openings, unanimously voted Wednesday evening in favor of a resolution laying out protections for undocumented students.

Similar to other schools in the Internationals Network, the new Queens outpost promises to offer support for children who are in the process of learning English and may have experienced disruptions to their schooling. Students at Queens International will also have access to Advanced Placement courses, opportunities to sample college coursework through CUNY’s College Now program, and paid apprenticeships in technology, finance, and business.

Much of the pushback to the new school at Wednesday’s panel meeting came from community members from I.S. 77, who pointed to a two-year co-location with Bushwick Leaders High School for Academic Excellence, an arrangement they described as chaotic. Some children from I.S. 77 said students at the high school sometimes got into fights that required them to stay in their classrooms until the disruption was resolved.

Other community members worried that opening Queens International in the building would strain access to shared resources, such as the cafeteria, and exacerbate enrollment declines at I.S. 77. They pushed for the Education Department to instead invest in expanding I.S. 77.

“It would create competition and comparison by parents and students and may lead to a shift of their students to an international school which is equipped with more resources,” Manisha Jain, a member of the local parent council in Queens District 24 said during the Wednesday evening meeting. The District 24 parent council overwhelmingly passed a resolution urging the city to reconsider the co-location proposal.

City officials contend that there is plenty of room for both schools, as the building is only at 39% capacity. Even once Queens International reaches its full projected enrollment of up to 510 students, the building will still have excess space, city projections show.

Alan Cheng, an Education Department superintendent who oversees the Internationals Network schools, noted that Queens International will focus on enrolling newly arrived immigrants who are learning English.

“This ensures that Queens International is meant to compliment, rather than compete, with the I.S. 77 dual language bilingual program,” he said, adding that the school “will address a critical need in our city.”

After hours of testimony, the proposal to open Queens International won nearly unanimous support from the education panel.

Notably, one of Mayor Adams’ appointees, Darling James Miramey, abstained from the vote. He called the proposal a “lose-lose situation.”

“I know that I’m [a] mayoral appointee and I should say yes,” Miramey said, referencing the longstanding practice of mayoral appointees voting in favor of proposals advanced by the Education Department, which the mayor controls. “I want more time for [a] better solution.”

The panel also approved another new Queens high school this coming fall called HBCU Early College Prep, a selective program that will partner with a historically Black university and offer early college credit. The vote in favor of that school was unanimous.

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

Leadership shakeup: Official overseeing reading overhaul steps down to run Brooklyn school

2025-01-14T22:09:11+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

A senior Education Department official who helps oversee Mayor Eric Adams’ sweeping literacy curriculum overhaul is stepping down to help run a new Brooklyn school focused on students with reading challenges.

Jason Borges, executive director of Literacy and Academic Intervention Services, will leave his post at the end of the month according to an internal message obtained by Chalkbeat.

In his new role, Borges will help spin up a school that city officials are planning to open this fall. He will serve as program director of School Planning at the Central Brooklyn Literacy Academy, which is slated to be the second city-operated public school exclusively devoted to students with dyslexia and other reading issues.

He is expected to become the school’s principal, said Naomi Peña, director of community and family engagement for the Literacy Academy Collective, a nonprofit organization that will support the program.

“I think we were all surprised initially because he was leading the [literacy] work” at the Education Department, Peña said. She said his leadership of the school would be “massively valuable” given his experience atop the Education Department’s labyrinthine bureaucracy.

Borges has been responsible for implementing Adams’ signature education initiative, which requires elementary schools across the city to transition to one of three city-mandated reading curriculums. His departure represents the latest leadership transition for the program, known as NYC Reads. Last year, city officials disbanded the division of teaching and learning, which coincided with the departure of a deputy chancellor involved in implementing the curriculum changes.

Jason Borges, who oversees NYC’s literacy curriculum overhaul, will leave his post at the end of the month to open a new school focused on students with reading challenges.

Borges’ transition to an individual school from a senior management position left some literacy overhaul supporters feeling nervous. Susan Neuman, a New York University literacy expert who serves on a literacy advisory group for the city’s Education Department, said Borges was involved in a wide range of elements of NYC Reads, offering the group updates on issues including distributing curriculum materials to educators and student assessments.

“Of course I’m worried about the continuity,” Neuman said. “This is just the first year of enactment for so many of our schools. Who is minding the store?”

Department officials indicated that Meghan Duffy, who serves as director of Academic Intervention Services, will temporarily assume some of Borges’ responsibilities, including oversight of NYC Reads, in addition to her current role.

“While his leadership and steadfast commitment to the success of NYC Reads will be greatly missed, we are confident he will make a significant impact at CBLA,” Miatheresa Pate, interim executive chief for Academics and Instruction, wrote in an internal letter. “We are confident that under Meghan’s capable leadership, the department will continue to thrive.”

Borges did not respond to a request for comment. Although he has classroom experience, Borges has never served as a principal.

The Central Brooklyn Literacy Academy has not been formally approved to open. The Education Department’s proposal for opening the school hinges on the closure of M.S. 394 in Crown Heights, which has struggled with declining enrollment, so the new program can take over its space.

But after families and educators at M.S. 394 voiced concerns about the closure plan, the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, which must sign off on closures and school openings, postponed a scheduled vote on the plan last month.

The city will consider alternative options to open the Central Brooklyn Literacy Academy if the closure is not approved, a department spokesperson said, though that may delay the timeline for opening the school.

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

Application black hole? Some NYC high schools warn families they can’t see auditions or essays

2025-01-14T00:14:07+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Many of New York City’s eighth grade families breathed a sigh of relief after submitting high school applications last month.

But some faced a fresh jolt of panic in recent weeks, as multiple schools that require auditions or essays emailed families asking them to resend their materials and raising concerns that technical snafus could prevent scores of applications from being considered.

LaGuardia High School, a top performing arts campus, sent messages to some families asking them to resend materials directly to the school. Staffers at Beacon High School have been unable to view hundreds of student essays, which are required for admission, because of problems opening the files, according to several people with knowledge of the situation. At Manhattan’s School of the Future, officials reached out to more than 100 families to resubmit essays that count for the entirety of a student’s application.

New York City has an unusually large share of high schools that admit students based on their academic or artistic abilities. Families can choose among more than 700 programs, submitting their school rankings through a centralized website called MySchools. Dozens of programs require additional materials for admission, such as artwork portfolios, video auditions, and essays.

Staffers at multiple schools said they saw a significant increase this year in the number of students whose application materials they were unable to access through MySchools, a platform that has experienced technical problems in the past.

Education Department officials contended there were no systemic technical glitches with the website and pointed to a number of reasons that a file might not properly upload to MySchools. Using a symbol like a pound sign or underscore in the document title, using a browser other than Google Chrome, using a phone rather than a computer, uploading a file that’s too big, or closing the browser before the document is fully submitted could all interfere with the file fully uploading, officials said.

Manhattan mom Stephanie Little uploaded her son’s portfolio of artwork, including drawings and a video statement, to the MySchools portal, according to screenshots reviewed by Chalkbeat. But earlier this month, she received a message from Gramercy Arts High School, one of the programs her son applied to, that claimed she had not uploaded her son’s required portfolio.

“It would be nice to have some confidence that when you’re going to upload to a central portal that it’s going to work as advertised,” said Little. She received a request to resubmit the materials. “If you’re going to make the system like this, shouldn’t it at least work?”

Little swiftly emailed her son’s materials directly to the school, and Gramercy officials confirmed that they received the portfolio.

The exchange prompted Little to reach out to a handful of other programs her son applied to that require supplemental materials. “If one school is having a problem, what’s to say another school isn’t?” Little wondered. Staffers at Gramercy declined to comment.

Most of the other campuses confirmed they could see her son’s submissions, but one his top choices, Frank Sinatra School of the Arts High School in Queens, responded that they were “unable to confirm” that they could review the materials.

Little resent them directly to the school.

Application problems increased this year

School officials and observers said it’s not unusual to experience some difficulties accessing supplemental application materials. But staffers at multiple campuses said this year’s technical problems were more pronounced.

At Beacon High School, where a supplemental essay counts for 80% of a student’s application, officials have been unable to view hundreds of students’ essays out of thousands of submissions, according to several people with knowledge of the situation.

That represents a big jump compared with prior years, sources said, requiring the school to reach out to individual families to ask for materials and keep track of which ones have been submitted, a painstaking process that is not complete.

At School of the Future, Principal Stacy Goldstein said the school has not been able to view about 110 out of 1,432 supplemental essays, affecting roughly 8% of applicants. The essay counts for 100% of a student’s application.

The Education Department’s central enrollment office offered as much support as it could and advised her to reach out to the affected families to have them resubmit their essays directly to the school, Goldstein said. Still, only about 50 of the 110 resubmitted their materials so far.

“This wasn’t an issue before,” Goldstein noted.

Education Dept officials say all materials will be reviewed

Families may not see or respond quickly enough to requests to resubmit, potentially costing them a chance at admission. At LaGuardia High School, officials wrote to one family on Jan. 2 asking them to resubmit materials by Jan. 5, according to emails reviewed by Chalkbeat. (The assistant principal who sent the message declined to comment.)

“What if a parent doesn’t get an email or doesn’t see an email? They don’t know this is happening,” said Elissa Stein, who runs High School 411, an admissions consulting service. “Families that have schools on their applications might not be considered because of this.”

Education Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle noted that most students are able to upload materials without issue. Families can confirm that their materials were correctly submitted by contacting their current or prospective school counselor or logging on to MySchools and downloading the materials a family previously submitted to make sure they’re viewable.

Department officials added that when families receive admission offers in early March, their results will show how each school scored the application materials. If a family does not receive a score, Lyle said officials would work with the family and school to ensure the materials will be reviewed and potentially make an admissions offer.

Still, some families are frustrated with the process.

The mom who received a three-day deadline to resubmit materials to LaGuardia and spoke on condition of anonymity said she wasn’t too stressed about the situation because the school is not her child’s first choice. Yet the back-and-forth left her feeling uneasy.

“I’m just submitting to the chaos of this system with an attitude of acceptance and helplessness,” she said.

Alex Zimmerman is a 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.