Please join us for class size briefing on Sunday, and AI hearing tomorrow

June 23, 2026

1.     Many hundreds of NYC schools applied for class size funds for next year and were rejected without explanation; other schools which had smaller classes this year may fall out of compliance because the DOE so far refuses to align its enrollment policies with the class sizes required by law.

This Sunday June 28 at 5 PM I will be holding a special briefing via Zoom on the DOE’s inadequate proposed class size plan and on strategies parents and teachers can use to help ensure that the administration improves it before submitting it to the state in July.   This is important so that more NYC schools and kids can have a chance for smaller classes next year and in the years to come.

I’ll also explain how the class size law was amended and do my best to answer any questions that you have. You can register for this briefing here.

DOE hearings on their proposed class size plan start this Thursday at 6 PM for the Bronx via Zoom and run through Thursday of next week – although you can attend and speak out any of these hearings; links to these hearings are here.

2.     A reminder: tomorrow Wednesday June 24 at City Hall, starting at 1 PM, the City Council Education and Technology committees will hold joint hearings on student privacy and Artificial Intelligence. You can sign up to testify here, either in person or remotely, or upload written testimony. If you can make it in person, please join our AI Moratorium Coalition at a rally in City Hall Park beforehand at 12 noon.

We believe that the this administration which still hasn’t released its updated AI guidance will make some sort of announcement at the hearing. Whether it will be acceptable to the thousands of parents, teachers and community members who signed our petition calling for a two-year moratorium to prevent serious harm to students’ learning, privacy and mental health is a question which cannot be answered at this time.In any case, if we know more about the DOE’s revised AI policies by Sunday, we will also provide a short summary on that issue at the top of our class size briefing at 5 PM – just sign up here.

The two issues are deeply connected, after all. Using AI in the classroom to “personalize” learning is the opposite of class size reduction – as it considerably weakens the human connection critical to a quality education and instead employs algorithms and bots that are dangerous to kids’ cognitive development and mental health. Just today, an independent analysis found that Google Gemini, being pushed by DOE to be used in classrooms throughout the city, is among the most dangerous chatbots for kids.

Moreover, while the research on the benefits of smaller classes is crystal clear, the opposite is true of AI. I have yet to see a single controlled study that shows that it helps kids learn or improves student outcomes in any way – though many studies show the reverse.

Hope to see you tomorrow and Sunday!