Welcome to a new school year & please fill out our survey as thousands more NYC children are in smaller classes!

Sept. 15, 2025

1.       Welcome back to another school year. Along with the cell phone ban, another important change is that 741 schools received funds to hire about 3,700 additional teachers to lower class size, with the goal of no more than 20 students per class in grades K-3; 23 in grades 4-8 and 25 in high school classes.

I’ve heard from teachers and parents how ecstatic they are for their kids to be learning in classes this small, rather than 30 students or more. But still, there are about 1500 public schools in NYC, including 500 or so that DOE admits do not have the space to meet the levels required by law at their current enrollment.

We’d love to hear from you — parents, teachers and other school staff — whether or not your school received this funding, as to what size are your kids’ classes, and if they are indeed smaller, what changes you’ve observed in terms of the classroom environment. Please respond to our brief survey, and if you don’t know, ask your child, your child’s teacher, principal, PTA or members of the School Leadership Team for this info as well.  If you’re both a parent and a teacher at a NYC school, please fill out our brief survey twice, if you can.

It would also be great if you could forward this message to some of these other individuals at your school, and encourage them to respond to the survey as well. Your names will remain confidential unless you say otherwise.

2.       We’ve been working over the summer in collaboration with a coalition of advocacy groups on an Education Roadmap for the next Mayor, whoever he may be. The launch of these proposals will be announced this Wednesday, September 17 at 6 pm, at Kimball Hall, 246 Greene Street, just one block east of Washington Square Park, near lots of subway lines. All are invited; you can sign up for free tickets here. Here’s an article about one of our proposals: that the next Chancellor should be selected through a community-driven process.

Thanks as always for your support,

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
phone: 917-435-9329
leonie@classsizematters.org
www.classsizematters.org
Follow on twitter @leoniehaimson
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Host of “Talk out of School” WBAI radio show and podcast at https://talk-out-of-school.simplecast.com/