Send your comments on DOE’s class size “plan” or sign onto ours!

July 2, 2025

Public comments are due on DOE’s draft Class Size Reduction Plan for the 2025-2026 school no later than July 8, next Tuesday, by emailing ContractsForExcellence@schools.nyc.gov.

You can also sign onto our comments, by entering your information here no later than Monday June 7 at midnight. An appendix with charts backing up these figures is also posted here.

Our detailed response points out many ways in which this document is inadequate and fails to comply with the law, as it lacks a multi-year plan as required 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.

Instead, the DOE appears to be counting on receiving exemptions from the state, so that it never has to provide these schools, which enroll nearly half of all students, with more space.

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. 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.

If you’d like to sign onto our comments, please enter your info into by entering your information here.  

2. There was one small piece of good news from the horrible budget bill that just passed the Senate. Senators voted 99-1 to eliminate the proposal to prohibit states and districts from regulating the use of AI. This followed a campaign by a bi-partisan coalition of elected officials, advocates and parents, including our Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, urging that this damaging and dangerous provision be removed from the bill. Thank you if you sent your own letter to the Senate, demanding they defy the tech billionaires who want to run roughshod over our kids’ privacy and their schools.

Thanks Leonie