May 23, 2023 Though the NYC Comptroller and others continue to use figures for school budget cuts this year that refer only to the reductions made to their Fair Student Funding allocations, for the last year or so we’ve been calculating the actual level of the much larger cuts to their entire budgets, called their […]
Our education budget priorities for next year, FY 2024, along with Alliance for Quality Education, NYC Kids PAC and the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council are here and below . They are focused on the need for schools to have their budgets restored and the cuts made this year reversed, and for the capital plan for […]
March 5, 2023 The new proposed amendment to the 5-year capital plan for schools was recently released; you can check it out here. Compared to the capital plan adopted in June 2021, the DOE/SCA wants to cut the number of new school seats to be built by 38% — or over 21,000. This is inconceivable […]
January 12, 2023 Yesterday, we re-ran the numbers on the Galaxy cuts to schools for this year, and the total net cuts at this point compared to last year are now at $823 million. Fully 86% of schools have experienced cuts to their budgets totaling $893 million, averaging about $655,000 each. See the table below. […]
Updated 11/18/2022. See our press release about the new class size data, which has sparked concerns among electeds, parents, teachers that the DOE is not prepared to comply with the new state law, and urging the Chancellor to form a task force as soon as possible to help develop the class size reduction plan.
See our Myths vs. Facts sheet for more info. An updated FAQ from Sept. 2024 is here. Jan.15, 2024 FAQ on the NY Class Size Law On June 2, 2022, the NY State Legislature passed a bill to by a vote of 59-4 in the Senate and 147-2 in the Assembly that required NYC schools […]
Former principal Shane Safir has a piece in Education Week arguing against the over reliance on standardized test scores to judge schools. Instead she argues that “We need to shift our focus from so-called “achievement gaps” to opportunity gaps by collecting qualitative information that is close to the learner.” In 2017, when NY State was […]
September 8, 2022 On June 2, 2022 the Legislature overwhelming passed S9460/ A10498 by a vote of 59-4 in the Senate and 147-2 in the Assembly. The bill requires that NYC implement a five-year class size reduction plan, to be phased in over five years, beginning in the fall of 2022. On Sept. 8, 2022, […]
This is a fast moving story. The fact sheet below has been updated since the Appellate Court gave the City an automatic stay late in the day on August 9. Here is the attorney’s statement on the Appellate Court’s action. August 9, 2022 On Friday, August 5, in Tucker vs the City of New York, […]
On July 18, 2022, four parents and teachers filed a lawsuit in the Manhattan Supreme Court on July 18, 2022 to block the Mayor’s budget cuts to schools in the case Tucker et. al. vs the City of NY. Subsequently, the New York City Civil Liberties Union filed an amicus brief in the case. The […]
Sign here to urge NYC to implement a real, multi-year strategy to lower class size, as the law intends, without exempting up to half or more of all students.
Talk out of School radio show and podcast airs Sunday night at 7 PM on WBAI 99.5 FM or online at www.wbai.org when Leonie Haimson and Daniel Alicea interview guests and discuss issues affecting public schools in NYC, the state level and nationally. You can stream or subscribe to the podcast here; or at iTunes, Spotify or Google.
We held our annual Skinny award dinner Wed. June 28, 2023, honoring Rep. Jamaal Bowman, former Bronx principal and now a progressive trailblazer who is fighting in Congress to protect and improve our public schools. More photos on Facebook .
