April 9. 2025 Yesterday, at a press conference at PS 88 in Queens, the Mayor, the Chancellor, the UFT and CSA with great fanfare announced that 746 schools will receive funding for next year to hire an additional 3700 teachers to lower class size. It was somewhat amazing to see how Mayor Adams, who has […]
Cross posted at Parent Coalition for Student Privacy website. April 8, 2025 The annual conference of Network for Public Education, on whose board I sit, was held last weekend in Columbus, Ohio. It was terrific as usual, with wonderful speeches and incisive and illuminating workshops and panel discussions on how to strengthen our public schools […]
March 14, 2025 Here and below is the testimony that Michael Rance, our Research Director, gave on behalf of Class Size Matters at the preliminary budget hearing yesterday. Our testimony highlighted the many failings of DOE and the School Construction Authority in delivering a multi-year plan capable of meeting the benchmarks in the class size […]
Feb. 20, 2024 Today we provided testimony at NYC Council Education hearings, in opposition to the DOE plan to to cancel the leases of five Community Based Organizations that provide Early Education services in Brooklyn and Queens. During the hearing, the DOE officials said they intend in the future to cancel contracts with CBO providers […]
Feb. 15, 2025 1. Parents: a quick note to let you know that the deadline to run for your District Community Education or Citywide Council is tomorrow, Sunday Feb. 16. With all the chaos and corruption of the Trump administration and apparently the Mayor’s office as well, this is a way you can […]
Feb. 7, 2025 An important update on privacy news: 1.As reported by the Daily News last night, four NYC schools were affected by the massive PowerSchool breach that occurred in December- contrary to previous assurances from the DOE: Fordham HS for the Arts; Long Island City High School; Lower East Side Prep and Westchester Square […]
Jan. 28, 2025 Dear all: Before the holiday break, about NYC schools were given an opportunity to apply for funding to lower class size next fall. The UFT now says that about 750 schools did apply, according to an article in Chalkbeat. We have posted a very short survey, asking if your school applied for […]
Dec. 29, 2024 Dear all — I hope you are having a wonderful holiday break. For many years, Class Size Matters has led the fight for smaller classes in NYC, which culminated in a new law passed in the Legislature, requiring class sizes be phased-in at all NYC schools. This reform was long overdue, given […]
Dec. 23, 2024 1. Just a quick note to let you know that along with the Education Law Center, we sent a letter to Commissioner Rosa last week, pointing out specific ways that NYC has been flouting the class size law. We urged her to require that DOE produce a five-year class size plan as […]
December 16, 2024 Please sign our petition if you haven’t already, urging DOE to implement a real five-year class size plan, including providing more space for those schools that need it. More than 600 people have so far, but we’d like to get to a thousand signers before the New Year. Last week, we briefed […]
Sign here to urge NYC to implement a real, multi-year strategy to lower class size, as the law intends, without exempting up to half or more of all students.
Talk out of School radio show and podcast airs Sunday night at 7 PM on WBAI 99.5 FM or online at www.wbai.org when Leonie Haimson and Daniel Alicea interview guests and discuss issues affecting public schools in NYC, the state level and nationally. You can stream or subscribe to the podcast here; or at iTunes, Spotify or Google.
We held our annual Skinny award dinner Wed. June 28, 2023, honoring Rep. Jamaal Bowman, former Bronx principal and now a progressive trailblazer who is fighting in Congress to protect and improve our public schools. More photos on Facebook .
