September 28, 2023 I wanted to share with you my piece in Monday’s Washington Post, written in response to Michael Bloomberg’s attacks against the new class size law. In my oped, I correct his factual errors and point out his misleading use of data as drawn from a recent Chalkbeat piece. In case it’s behind […]
Sept. 20, 2023 See below; testimony here and below for today’s NYC Council hearings on the dangers to both privacy and the quality of education of DOE’s plans to expand the use of online learning. See also our presentation last night on the many ways DOE is putting student data privacy at risk and not […]
Sept. 19, 2023 Last night I gave this presentation to CEC 15, which passed a resolution on the need for DOE to better protect student privacy. If your CEC or Presidents Council would like us to present to your group, or pass a similar resolution, let us know by emailing us at [email protected]
The Class Size Working Group appointed by the Chancellor to help develop a plan to lower class size citywide in accordance with the new state law is holding public engagement sessions online and in person starting next week to present their preliminary proposals and get feedback: Tuesday, September 26th – 5- 7:30pm online […]
September 12, 2023 Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Mayor Adams has now ordered every city agency to impose an immediate hiring freeze and submit budget cuts for next year totaling nearly 15%: 5% cuts by October 6, another round of 5% cuts by January, and yet another 5% by April. According […]
Sept. 8, 2023 Dear all — Welcome to a new school year, and the first year of the phase-in of smaller classes, according to the new state law. Unfortunately, we have already heard of schools where class sizes have increased substantially compared to last year. We anticipated this would occur, given cuts to Fair Student […]
August 28 update: The Daily News published an article about our letter and the fact that DOE omitted its only promise for the coming school year from its revised class size plan, and no longer promises that schools that complied with the class size caps in the law last year would receive support and funding […]
August 15, 2023 Dear all – I hope you are having a delightful and restful summer. I wanted to bring to your attention that the DOE has posted an updated draft class size reduction plan that omits the only promise made in their previous plan – that they would help ensure that the schools that […]
August 3, 2023 Comments on paper by Matthew Chingos and Ariella Meltzer, “Class Size Reductions May Be Inequitably Distributed under a New Mandate in New York City” The primary claim made in this paper is that lowering class size would inequitably benefit white and Asian students rather than Black and Hispanic students, who tend to […]
Articles about the IBO estimate were published in the Daily News and Gothamist. July 12, 2023 Comments on IBO brief on class size reduction costs: It is surprising that the IBO came out with a higher estimate of the staffing cost for the new class size reduction law than the city’s estimate– $1.6- $1.8 billion […]
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 .
