Our detailed critique of DOE draft class size plan for 2025-2026 school year

July 9, 2025

Below and here is our detailed critique of the DOE’s draft Class Size Reduction Plan for the 2025-2026 school year, along with a list of signers including many parent leaders, and an appendix with charts backing up these figures. These figures are also posted here.  Thanks to those of you who signed on, or sent your own comments.

Our detailed response points out the many ways in which this draft plan is inadequate and fails to comply with the law.  It only deals with next year, though the law requires a detailed multi-year plan to address the need to reach schools in year four and five, and does not even attempt to show how sufficient space will be provided for the nearly 500 schools that are too overcrowded at their current enrollment to lower class size to mandated levels.  These 500 schools enroll nearly half of all students.

It is now more than three years since the Legislature passed the class size law in June 2022, and yet DOE continues to stall and delay, appearing to rely on the expectation that they will never have to fully comply.  Instead, the DOE appears to be counting on receiving permanent exemptions from the state, as well as from their union partners, the UFT and CSA, so that these schools will never have to lower class size.

In fact, their over reliance on exemptions has gotten worse over time, as shown by how this latest “plan” uses the word exemption 40 times, compared to 22 times in the last year’s plan, and only eight times in their initial class size plan from June 2023.

By July 22, the DOE is supposed to post a final, updated class size plan and submit it to the State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa for approval, along with a summary of public comments and an explanation and reasons for which public comments were incorporated, or not, though they have never in my experience made any significant changes from the preliminary draft.  We will keep you updated as to at that point, what steps we will take next, together.