June 12, 2022 Class Size Matters would like to invite you to our “Skinny Award” dinner to be held Monday, June 27 at 6 PM. This our first fundraiser in three years, and especially important this year as we have something really momentous to celebrate: the passage of a new state law that will require […]
Our 2022 Parent Action conference was great; about 80 people participated. Here is the presentation I gave on the new class size bill and yet how proposed budget cuts to schools will likely cause class sizes to rise sharply rather than decrease. Sure enough, last night school budgets were released, and they were brutal. Some […]
Updated: June 5, 2022 The class size bill passed the NY State Senate Thursday afternoon at 59-4; and the Assembly early Friday morning; 147-2. Pretty good articles about the passage were published in Gothamist, Chalkbeat , Politics NY and News 4 NY. Other mainstream media outlets merely uncritically repeated long-debunked anti-class size myths. Now please […]
June 1, 2022 A new bill was introduced in the Legislature yesterday, supported by our elected leaders and a majority of both houses, that would require NYC DOE to phase in class size caps in all NYC public schools to be achieved over five years – to no more than 20 students in K-3, 23 […]
Please sign up now for our Annual Parent Action Conference on Saturday June 4 from 4 to 6 PM, sponsored by Class Size Matters and NYC Kids PAC. Keynote speakers will include Congressman Jamaal Bowman, NY State Senator Robert Jackson and NYC Council Education Chair Rita Joseph. Following that, we’ll have a brief presentation on […]
May 25, 2022 Check out our submitted budget testimony before the NYC Council Finance Committee for today. We urged the Chair Justin Brannan and other Council Members to prevent the Mayor’s proposed cuts to school budgets of $375 million, that are projected to lead to a loss of about 3200 teaching positions, which in turn […]
May 24, 2022 1. Just a quick note to let you know that there are City Council public hearings tomorrow on the budget, starting at 10 AM. If you’d like to testify by zoom, you can sign up here. Written testimony can also be submitted for up to to 72 hours after these hearings are […]
May 23, 2022 Below is the presentation I gave to the ECC on the proposed budget cuts to schools and the capital plan and their likely impact on class size and school overcrowding. Because of the sharp decline in enrollment of the past two years, the DOE has a real opportunity to sustain the smaller […]
Because of our continued advocacy and the support of the Commissioner, the NY State Education Department is now requiring that NYC hold its CEC and Borough public hearings on their Contract for Excellence spending plan for next year in May and June of this year – rather than dragging these hearings into the fall and […]
May 20, 2022 Dear folks — 1. The State Legislature will be in session only for twenty more days. Please call your Legislators today and urge them to pass the bills that would require NYC to phase in smaller classes in all grades. Tell them to support and bring to the floor for […]
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 .
