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 […]
July 15, 2022 Yesterday, July 14, we again analyzed the total Galaxy school budgets via an automated mechanism, scraping the data posted on the DOE Galaxy look-up tool here . Our new spreadsheet is here. According to our analysis, the overall school cuts for FY 23 now total about $1.42 billion compared to FY 22; […]
Total Galaxy cuts to schools as of June 13, 2022, sorted by Council district, added up to more than $1.7 billion – far more than the $215 million in Fair Student Funding that is widely reported. Though more funding will be added to schools after that date, it generally is limited and supposed to be […]
March 20, 2022 Today Class Size Matters released a new class size report, entitled “What has happened to class size this year and what will happen to class size if the Mayor’s cuts are enacted?” The report shows significant and highly beneficial decreases in average class size this year citywide due to enrollment decline, though […]
Below is the memo of support for S7666A and A8801 that we just sent the bill sponsors, Sen. Liu and AM Benedetto. Organizations should send in their own memos of support for this important bill.
The original 2007 DOE Instructional Footprint, used to guide space allocation and changes in school utilization including co-locations, assumed class sizes of twenty students per class in grades K-3, and 25 students in grades 4-5 in non-Title One schools. (It did not say what class sizes were assumed for Title One schools). In 2009, however, […]
The following letter was sent on July 29, 2021 to the NY State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa and the Regents Chancellor Lester Young concerning the many problems with NYC’s Contract for Excellence proposed plan.
The DOE has proposed a Contracts for Excellence spending plan that is completely inadequate to provide an equitable or adequate education to NYC kids — contrary to the intent of the law, which was passed to fulfill the goals of the CFE lawsuit. The DOE claims that the state has allocated no more funding to […]
August 9, 2021 Below and attached are talking points in English and in Spanish on how parents and teachers directly or through your School Leadership Teams should urge your principal to use available funds to lower class size and to help ensure social distancing next year, for the sake of stronger academic support and health […]
See our letter written with the Education Law Center to the DOE Chancellor about the need to hold prompt hearings to gain input from parents and others on how the C4E funding will be spent next year. This public input is legally required and is especially critical now, given that our schools are finally getting […]
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 .
