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 […]
Updated March 5, 2023 You can send an email to your Legislators here, in opposition to Gov. Hochul’s proposal to lift the NYC charter cap and that instead the charter law needs to be strengthened, to eliminate NYC’s onerous and unfair obligation to provide all new and expanding charter schools with space, remove loopholes which […]
Feb. 15, 2023 1. Last week, state education budget hearings were held, where many groups, advocates and organizations inveighed against the Governor’s proposal to expand the cap on charter schools. Chancellor Banks also testified and was non-committal, saying it was up to the Mayor weigh in, But under questioning from Sen. Liz Krueger, he admitted […]
Feb. 12, 2023 Below see Class Size Matters’ testimony from last week’s State education budget hearings, which describe some of the many reasons we are extremely concerned that the DOE is not prepared to meet the class size limits in the new state law, especially in the out years, given repeated cuts to school budgets, […]
Feb. 7, 2023 Last week, Gov. Hochul proposed raising the cap on charter schools so that 100-300 more could be authorized statewide and in NYC, since every new charter school is allowed to expand to all grade levels. Charters are already costing the city about $3 billion per year, and this could double the cost, […]
January 25, 2023 For my account of these hearings, and the disappointing testimony of Deputy Chancellor Weisberg, see the NYC Public School Parent blog here. You can also read Jenn Choi’s testimony at that link, about the hurdles students with disabilities face being admitted to schools that meet their needs and allow them to reach […]
January 13, 2023 Yesterday, the Mayor released his preliminary budget for next year. DOE as a whole would be cut by another $800 million, over and above a cut of an additional $176 million made in November. Though more than $500 million of these reductions appear to relate to the decision to halt the further […]
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. […]
December 19, 2022 It’s been something of a banner year for Class Size Matters, as we helped get a new law passed that will obligate NYC schools to lower class size in all grades, to be phased-in starting next fall. This has been our top priority since we launched our organization over twenty years ago, […]
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 .
