The Board of Regents and the New York State Education Department are re-examining the use of Regents “exit exams” as a requirement for high school graduation, and are holding a series of regional public sessions to gather input from parents, teachers and other stakeholders before making any changes to the current policy. These meetings will […]
You can download a PDF version here. What are we proposing? Class Size Matters is urging that the Mayor and NYC Council allocate $100 million to be allocated towards hiring teachers to lower class size, starting first in the early grades and in struggling schools. That amount could pay for the salaries of about 1,000 new […]
Jan. 6, 2020 The School Siting Task Force, created by Local Law 168, met only twice with no input from parent members appointed by the DOE or City Council members. It produced only a 1 1/2 page report, along with two spreadsheets, one a list of empty city-owned sites from the Department of Citywide Administrative […]
For immediate release: October 21, 2019 Contact: Leonie Haimson, 917-435-9329, leoniehaimson@gmail.com New report reveals over $100 million spent last year by NYC on charter facilities Includes payments to help charter schools rent space in buildings owned by their CMOs or related parties Also: 175 public schools co-located with charters lack $22M in matching funds […]
August 6, 2019 Dear Speaker Johnson and members of the City Council: We are very disappointed in the process and outcome of the School Siting Task Force, created by Local Law No. 168 in Sept. 2018. The law mandated the creation of an “interagency task force” to facilitate the acquisition of publicly and privately-owned […]
On Thursday May 23, 2019 the Education Law Center filed an appeal on behalf of nine NYC parents, Class Size Matters and the Alliance for Quality Education, urging the Appellate court to order the Department of Education to reduce class size in all grades as the Contracts for Excellence law requires. Our original lawsuit, Agostini vs. Elia, was filed […]
List of PDFs of approved resolutions urging City Council to fund class sizes here: CEC 2 CEC 21 Education Council Consortium resolution urging City Council to fund class size reduction Approved May 10, 2019 Whereas in the landmark Campaign for Fiscal Equity case, the state’s highest court concluded that smaller classes were necessary for NYC […]
PDF version here. NYC Should Fund Class Size Reduction Now! Class Size Matters is proposing that the NYC Council allocate $200 million to be targeted to reducing class size, starting first in the early grades and in struggling schools. That amount would pay for the salaries of about 2,000 new teachers, which could reduce class […]
A pdf you can download of this memo is here. Agostini v Elia—The New York City C4E Class Size Case In July 2017, nine parents from each borough of New York City filed a petition with the State Commissioner of Education (“Commissioner”) charging the City Department of Education (“DOE”) with failing to reduce […]
This blog post was originally posted here. PDF version is available here. Wednesday, February 27, 2019. Requiem for the Renewal schools: what went wrong? On February 26, 2019, the Mayor and the Chancellor Carranza announced an end to the Renewal program, which has cost the city $773 million since 2014. Since that time, of the 94 schools put on the list […]
You’re invited! Class Size Matters will hold our annual Parent Action Conference co-sponsored with NYC Kids Pac on May 11th. You can sign up for the conference here.
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 .
