Parents, educators,  advocates & community leaders urge Mayor and Chancellor to improve their class size reduction “plan”

Articles in Chalkbeat and Brooklyn Reader.

For immediate release: June 25, 2024
Contact:  Leonie Haimson, 917-435-9329; [email protected]

 

Parents, educators,  advocates and community leaders urge Mayor Adams and Chancellor Banks to improve their class size reduction “plan”

 

On June 24, 2024,  about 570 NYC parents, educators, advocates and community leaders sent critical comments to the Mayor and Chancellor Banks, urging them to improve their second year draft class size “plan”­ and pointing out the inadequate funding for additional staffing and space.  The numerous problems with their “plan”  make it questionable if the DOE will be able to meet the benchmarks in the class size law, starting next year and beyond.

These comments were transmitted as part of the public process outlined in the class size law.  Now, the Department of Education is supposed to take into account the public input in revising its draft “plan” and explain why the feedback was adopted or not in, to be submitted to the State Education Department along with its updated plan no later than July 5, 2024.

While DOE officials have estimated that 10,000 to 12,000 more teachers will have to be hired to achieve the class size limits in the law, they have allocated $137 million for that purpose next year, enough to pay for only about 1,300 teachers, only a small fraction of the number required over four years. Moreover, this funding has been spread so thinly over 1,057 schools that nearly 500 would receive less than $100,000 – not enough to hire even one additional teacher.

Worse yet, more than 100 schools receiving class size funds are seeing concurrent cuts to their Fair Student Funding averaging $129,931, more than the average funding they are slated to receive to lower class size.  Instead, the commenters ask the city to appropriate enough funding to hire one-fourth of the teachers necessary, or $300 million, as the longer the DOE waits, the more challenging it will be to ensure the quality and certification of the teachers needed in future years.

The commenters also point out that despite the fact that 650 principals have said that they currently do not have enough classrooms to lower class size to the levels required, DOE has made no proposal to provide more space, either by allowing principals to cap enrollment at lower levels or by building more schools.

Instead, they have cut the spending on new capacity by $2.5 billion in the proposed five-year capital plan since the law was passed, and still refuse to add the $2 billion for more classrooms that is required by the state budget, adopted last April.  Instead, the draft class size “plan” urges principals to assign students to online classes, with or without parental consent,  as challenged by a recent appeal to the Commissioner.  DOE officials have also directed every district Superintendent to improve class size compliance in their schools by three percent – which implicitly violates the language in the law that class sizes in the neediest schools must be lowered first.

Said Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters about the draft “plan”, “This haphazard collection of random proposals is really no plan at all.  By refusing to implement an actual multi-year plan with sufficient funding allocated for staffing and space, indicating in which schools class sizes will be lowered with what resources, DOE officials risk either being unable to comply with the law,  or doing it in such a reckless fashion that their last-minute efforts bring about chaos, confusion, and serious tradeoffs that could harm NYC students and schools.”

As the public comments sent yesterday conclude, if city officials do not make sufficient changes to its draft “plan”,  the undersigned will ask the State to require a corrective action plan.

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