746 schools will be able to lower class size next year! but will Mayor Adams help the schools left out?

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 fought and criticized the class size law ever since it was passed nearly three years ago, is now lavishing it with praise, saying that he was proud to be the first Mayor to achieve smaller classes, following “a thirty year fight.”

As he put it, “it’s the best way to help our students learn, and to identify when our students are going through some form of emotional issue as well, because part of learning is not only to be academically smart, but to develop their full personhood and for them to be emotionally intelligent. …It is clearly the best way for our children to thrive, and today, we’re taking yet another step toward making New York City the best place to raise children.”

He wrapped up the event by concluding that it “should not have taken 110 mayors before you got a smaller class size…. children are going to become who they should become because … smaller class sizes will make it happen. “  You can see the video here. The Daily News and CBS reported the news, among other media outlets.

The DOE has not yet released the list of schools that will receive these funds, nor the total amount allocated for that purpose, though many teachers heard on Wednesday from their principals as to their schools’ fate. I personally was contacted by several teachers, some of whom were thrilled by learning that their school will get these funds, as well as others who were quite upset because their schools’ applications were rejected.

According to information given out yesterday at the press event, of the 800 or so schools that applied for this funding, 700 schools will receive all the funds they requested, and only 50 schools that applied will not receive any. Michael Mulgrew of the UFT said these schools will be given extra help to improve their applications for the following school year.

It’s wonderful that so many schools will be able lower class size and start the hiring process earlier than usual, rather than wait for July or even until the fall, when too often hiring occurs in response to contractual class size violations. Yet we cannot ignore that there are hundreds of schools that were shut out of the application process, and told not to even ask for these funds, since they do not have the space for smaller classes.

There are more than 1500 NYC public schools, so nearly half of all schools did not even apply, most likely because of a lack of space. Moreover, in December, DOE posted a list of 495 schools that enroll nearly half of all students, yet in their view do not have room to reach the class size caps at their current enrollment. Yet city officials have refused to implement any plan to ensure that these schools will have enough space to lower class size in the future.  This means it is extremely unlikely that the city will meet the legal requirement of 80% -100% of classes meeting the class size caps in years four and five.

At a recent Council budget hearing, Cora Liu of the School Construction Authority testified  that 70,000 more school seats would be needed to comply with the class size law, though only about 33,000 seats are funded in the capital plan and fewer than 20,000 are expected to be completed by September 2028, the deadline in law. Nor has the DOE allowed schools to cap their enrollment at lower levels to create more space, even when there are underutilized schools sitting nearby. Many of these underutilized schools are also severely underfunded and could use more students to increase their budgets, which in turn would allow them to offer more comprehensive programming and services.

In any case, you can be sure that we will continue our fight until all NYC students are able to benefit from smaller classes, which as the Mayor said, is the “best way for our children to thrive.” Perhaps now that he has undergone a class size conversion, he will be more responsive in listening to parents, teachers and advocates about the need to make this possible.

Whether your child will be able to learn in a smaller class next year, or is being denied that opportunity, please show that you care, by supporting our work and making a donation to Class Size Matters today.