Class Size Matters urges Commissioner Rosa to require NYC DOE to revise and fundamentally improve their class size “plan”

Articles about the letter were published in Politico and the Daily News.

For immediate release: July 22, 2024
Contact:  Leonie Haimson, 917-435-9329; leonie@classsizematters.org

Class Size Matters urges Commissioner Rosa to require NYC DOE to revise and fundamentally improve their second year class size “plan”

 

On July 22, 2024, Class Size Matters sent a letter to Commissioner Rosa, urging her to require the NYC Department of Education revise and fundamentally improve their FY 2025 class size “plan,” as it provides none of the necessary multi-year strategies in budgeting, staffing, or space that would enable schools to meet the benchmarks in the law.  This follows a petition sent to Chancellor Banks in June, signed by 570 parents, educators, and community leaders, which made many of the same points, urging a revision of the DOE’s earlier draft plan, which apparently fell on deaf ears.

The state class size law mandates that New York City cap class sizes in its public schools to no more than 20 students per class in grades K-3; no more than 23 students per class in grades 4th-8th, and no more than 25 students per high school class by September of 2028, with an increasing percentage of 20% of all classes required to meet those caps each year. Moreover, the law requires that DOE submit a “class size reduction plan” annually that will “include the methods to be used to achieve the class size targets, such as the creation or construction of more classrooms and school buildings.”

The NYC DOE is now about to begin the second year of that process, and yet the document submitted by DOE officials on July 6, 2024 includes none of the steps that will be necessary to achieve these goals. Despite the fact that the city started with a big head start, in that more than 40% of classes met the goals in the law when the bill was passed overwhelmingly by the Legislature in June 2022, and the Governor gave DOE an extra year to plan when she signed the bill into law the following September, they have moved backwards instead.  School budgets have been repeatedly cut and the capital plan slashed since the law was passed, and class sizes have significantly increased in most schools, as reflected in the DOE’s own June 2024 class size report.

Said Leonie Haimson, Executive Director: “The document submitted to the state does not constitute an actual plan in the proper sense of the word, since none of the feeble measures taken so far or outlined in the document would give anyone confidence that DOE intends to follow through or even make a good faith effort to comply with the law.”

“The lack of data, analysis and substantive proposals  in this document is especially regrettable,  given how the Class Size Working Group, composed of parent leaders, educators, and advocates appointed by Chancellor Banks, released a report last December, which contained a series of actionable steps that if implemented would provide a clear roadmap towards compliance.  Yet few if any of those proposals have been adopted and the Adams administration continues to drag its feet,” Haimson added, a member of the Working Group.

As Commissioner Rosa wrote Chancellor Banks last December, “it is imperative for the city and its stakeholder groups to complete a more comprehensive assessment and analysis of what budget and physical space needs must be prioritized and to identify the detailed, actionable items in the class size reduction plan that will be implemented over the next several years.”

Yet instead of outlining this multi-year, comprehensive strategy, or explaining which schools will be provided with sufficient numbers of teachers or classrooms next year and in the years to come, the DOE writes that they will “continue to investigate opportunities and methodologies by which to direct resources to schools to meet the newly mandated class size caps.” To continue to “investigate opportunities and methodologies” is not a plan. Instead, DOE officials appear to assume that they will be able to negotiate exemptions  to the law rather than comply, as revealed by the fact that they use the word “exemption” 22 times in the document.

“Reducing class size in New York City public schools is required not only by the Class Size Law but also by the CFE decision, where New York’s highest court recognized small class size as a resource essential to a constitutional ‘sound basic education,’ said Wendy Lecker, Senior Attorney at Education Law Center. “Without concerted planning and adequate funding, the DOE will not meet the statutorily mandated class size targets, and students will continue to be deprived of the benefits of reasonable class size.”

“The refusal to outline what strategies will be used and in which specific schools to lower class sizes to appropriate levels makes it a crapshoot as to whether 40% of classes will meet the caps as required next school year, and extremely unlikely that schools will be able to meet the goals of 60-100% in years three to five,” concluded Haimson.  “That would take immediate action by DOE to develop and implement a real plan, which doesn’t seem likely unless the State Education Department and Commissioner Rosa demand that they do so.”

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